Prof. H. G. Seeley — On the Genus OrnitJiocheirus. 17 



arranged as a proximal carpal, a distal carpal, and a lateral carpal, 

 Two of them are figured by Prof. Owen, who regarded the distal 

 carpal as scapho-cuneiform ; while a very imperfect example of the 

 proximal carpal is named the unciform : neither of these determi- 

 nations, the reverse of those that follow, were given as more than 

 probable guesses." In "Remarks on Prof. Owen's Monograph on 

 Dimorphodon," published in the " Annals of Nat. Hist.," for Aug., 

 1870, I gave a figure of the carpus and adjacent bones in the 

 genus Ornithocheirus, side by side with the corresponding bones of 

 the ostrich, such as I had been accustomed to exhibit in my lectures 

 at Cambridge. Prof. Owen has never called in question either that 

 nomenclature of the carpus, the restoration of it, or the reasons 

 given for so reconstructing it ; and 1 venture to repeat that the 

 carpus is a portion of the hand vfhich is, in this type, so eminently 

 bird-like in the form and arrangement of its elements as amply to 

 sustain the name which I gave the genus, if indeed it needed any 

 such justification. 1 am there foi'e at a loss to understand the 

 imputation that I have adduced no evidence which would justify the 

 term Ornithocheirus. Since that date, in the Journal of the Linnean 

 Society for December, 1876 (pp. 98 to 103), I have discussed anew 

 the characters of the hand in Ornithocheirus, showing that this genus 

 possessed three well-developed metacarpal bones, of which two 

 were large, like the metacarpals of birds, and I am quite content, if 

 a name can be called in question on such grounds, to leave its 

 defence to the evidence there set forth. The Ornithosaurs, however, 

 all have the ornithic type of hand, and make no approximation to the 

 structure of hand seen in either reptiles or mammals. But if we are 

 to begin calling in question the fitness of generic names, and proceed 

 to cancel them whenever any new interpretation is supposed to make 

 them more or less inappropriate, nomenclature will be in a constant 

 state of flux whenever names aspire to convey interpretations of 

 characters. Thus we have Ceteosaurus ; there is nothing whale-like 

 in this Saurian, it was not even an inhabitant of the water, but the 

 name sufficiently served the purpose of indicating a type of structure 

 which has since become better known. Similarly Hylceosaurus, if 

 it means anything at all, signifies a wood Saurian ; and it may be 

 douiDted whether evidence has been adduced which would justify 

 such a name. I am not concerned to defend the name Ptenodactylns, 

 because it has been abandoned in my later work ; but I imagine the 

 name might be used to indicate a " winged Saurian," without any 

 undue stretching of meaning ; and I therefore urge, that until 

 some weighty reasons for discarding the generic names which I gave 

 to the Greensand Ornithosaurs are adduced, there will be no need 

 for any one to remember that the genus Colohorhynchus was ever 

 instituted. I have found it necessary to make this explanation 

 because almost the only fossil which closely resembles the species 

 which I have here described is a species from the Hastings Sand, 

 which Prof. Owen has described under the name Coloborhynchus 

 clavirostris. From tlie figure it is impossible to tell whether it be a 

 pre-maxillary or dentary bone, but from its close resemblance in 



DECADE II. — VOL. VIII. — NO. I. 2 



