16 Prof. H. G. Sceleij — On the Genus OrnitJwcheints. 



anterior to the muzzle, and as having a palate with a longitudinal 

 ridge. After giving briefly the characters of snouts or mandibles of 

 twenty-four species in that memoir, it was remarked (p. 127), "The 

 species which follow were separated in the Index (to the Ornitho- 

 sauria, etc.) as a different genus. That proposal might still be 

 sustained, for these massive truncated jaws are unlike the spear- 

 shaped jaws of many of the species, and to the minds of some 

 readers the forms already described will arrange themselves in 

 groups which not improbably indicate genera; but a re-examination 

 of the type Pterodactylus shnus, Owen, has convinced me that it is a 

 lower jaw, and therefore it affords no evidence of the presence or 

 absence of the peculiar front pre-maxillary teeth which characterize 

 nearly all the Cretaceous species." Since that date circumstances 

 have delayed raj intended description of these fossils in detail ; but 

 in 1874, Prof. Owen, in a Monograph on the Pterosauria, published 

 by the Palseontographical Society, after referring to the tapering 

 snouts which formed Von Meyer's group of Pterodactyles named 

 Siibulirostres, observed that the series might be traced to other forms 

 in which the snout became so shortened as to be truncated ; and such 

 forms he suggested might be named Trimcirostres. He then (p. 6) 

 goes on to observe that the species of this family which have the 

 foremost pair of teeth projecting forward in the upper jaw from the 

 truncate surface at a higher level than the alveolar border form the 

 genus Coloborhynchus. That there may be no mistake about the 

 nature and limits of this genus, the species Golohorlujnclms Sedgwichi 

 and G. Cuvieri are quoted as examples. I am unable to detect any differ- 

 ence between Prof. Owen's definition of that genus and my previous 

 definition in 1870 of Ornithocheirus ; while Prof. Owen, by quoting 

 the types which I had placed at the beginning of my enumeration of 

 the species of Ornithocheirus, conclusively shows that he intends his 

 name as a synonym. As it is not usual for any author knowingly 

 to bui'den nomenclature with synonyms without justification, Prof. 

 Owen added a note stating that he " has no evidence, and Mr. Seeley 

 has given none, of such departure from the Pterosaurian type of 

 hand as would justify the term Ornithocheirus proposed by Mr. 

 Seeley in 1870, in his Ornithosauria (p. 112), or the term Ptenodac- 

 tylus previously proposed by Mr. Seeley for the same Pterodactijle in 

 the Index to the Fossils, etc., in the Woodwardian Museum." I 

 certainly was under the impression that the genus had been 

 sufficiently explained in the characters set forth in the descriptions 

 of the skeleton between pages 28 and 94 and between pages 112 

 and 128 of the " Onithosauria." But Prof. Owen implies in 

 this note that the Pterosaurian type of hand is a fixed quantity 

 already known to him, and as I had already in previous 

 writings expressed ray dissent from the interpretation which 

 Prof. Owen had given of the Ornithosaurian carpus, I may 

 perhaps fairly claim that Prof. Owen is not altogether an un- 

 prejudiced judge as to what the Pterosaurian type of hand really 

 is. It seemed to me that the carpus, as I have stated in the Orni- 

 thosauria (p. 48), consists in Ornithocheirus of "three bones 



