452 Prof. Carl Vogt on 
its reduced sternum, and the slender ridges of its humerus, 
it must have been but a bad flier. Its tail, so long and so 
weak, must have been rather a drag than a rudder; and its 
short rounded wings may perhaps have been sufficient to 
accomplish short distances, but would not have allowed con- 
siderable flights. 
The Jurassic Archeopteryx doubtless forms a bond of 
union between Reptiles and the Odontornithes, or Birds-with- 
teeth, of the Cretaceous deposits of America, so admirably 
described by Prof. Marsh. But we must not forget that a 
very considerable gap exists between these two types, and 
that a series of successively modified forms, after Archeopteryx, 
with its dominant Reptilian characters, is needed to reach the 
Odontornithes, among which, except some secondary points in 
the structure of their vertebre, the only Reptilian character is 
the presence of teeth in both their jaws. ‘To sum up, Arche- 
opteryx may be regarded as a Reptile flymg by means of fea- 
thers and perching with the legs of a Bird, while the Odontor- 
nithes are true Birds, possessing in their skeleton some traces 
recalling their Reptilian origin. It would doubtless be rash 
to wish to reconstruct from imagination these intermediate 
‘forms—the more rash, seeing that the Odontornithes them- 
selves present different forms, showing different stocks, as 
Prof. Marsh has demonstrated. 
We may be yet more embarrassed when we concern our- 
selves with seeking the direct ancestors of Archeopteryx. 
We wish to see in it an immediate descendant of the Compso- 
gnathus, found in the same Solenhofen beds; and we forget 
that ancestor and descendant cannot be contemporaries. Prof. 
Gegenbaur, in his ‘ Manual of Comparative Anatomy,’ unites 
Compsoynathus and Archeopteryx in one subclass of Saur- 
opsids, which he calls Saururt. It is true that they both 
have the long Saurian tail; but can one unite a Reptile having 
no trace of teathers, furnished with very short fore feet, and 
hind-feet formed like those of Reptiles, except some approxi- 
mation to those of Birds—in a word, a leaping Reptile having 
the form of a Kangaroo—and the Archeopteryx which we 
have just been analyzing? 
