342 Reviews — Seeley's Ornithosauria, 



culating surfaces are in general well preserved and easily defined ; 

 the soft marl in which they were embedded having preserved them 

 from being flattened or distorted. 



Among the earliest collectors of these interesting remains were 

 Mr. James Carter, Prof. G. D. Liveing, Eev. H. G. Day, Eev. T. G. 

 Bonney, and Prof. Sedgwick ; the last three have deposited their 

 collections in the Museum of the University. 



The literature of the Cambridge Pterodactyles is confined to 

 memoirs by Prof. Owen, published by the Palseontographical Society 

 in 1851, 1859, 1860 ; and by Mr. Seeley in some memoirs com- 

 municated to the Cambridge Philosophical Society in 1864, 1868, 

 1869 ; a paper read at the British Association in 1864, and two 

 papers in the Annals of Natural History for 1859 and 1860 ; and in 

 all he claims a position for these animals as a " separate sub-class," 

 having greater affinities to birds than to reptiles ; and this he 

 strongly maintains, with much logical reasoning, from his point of 

 view, throughout the present volume. 



With respect to the organization of the Pterodactyles, Mr. Seeley 

 remarks, " that nearly every writer on Pterodactyles, who has ex- 

 pressed any opinion at all, has formed an estimate of his own of their 

 organization. They have been assigned to almost all possible posi- 

 tions in the vertebral province by great anatomists who all had 

 before them very similar materials ; " and he has given us an inter- 

 esting summary of the diverse views held by these various writers, 

 from which we gather that Soemmering regarded the Pterodactyles 

 as a kind of bat, but he had a suspicion, from certain characters of 

 the head and feet, that it was intermediate between mammals and 

 birds. Oken at first thought that the animal was mammalian, but 

 afterwards he was inclined to consider it reptilian. Wagler saw 

 some resemblance in the jaws and back part of the skull to those of 

 dolphins ; whilst Goldfuss, anticipating the evolutionists of to-day, 

 " sees in Pterodactyle an indication of the course that nature took in 

 changing the reptilian organization to that of birds and mammals." 

 Wagner is convinced that the Pterodactyles are Amphibians ap- 

 proximating to the Saurians. Quenstedt sees evidence that the 

 animal was able to walk upright, even more so than birds ; whilst 

 Burmeister entirely rejects these opinions of Quenstedt. These are 

 only a few examples of the many points of structure, affinity, and 

 habits upon which comparative anatomists differ from each other, 

 showing how difficult it has been to define the position in nature of 

 these curiously-formed creatures. The late accomplished anatomist 

 and palaeontologist, Herman von Meyer, who has done so much in 

 his various memoirs towards elucidating the anatomy of this in- 

 teresting order of extinct animals, arrives, after an elaborate com- 

 parison of their remains with those of other classes of vertebrates, 

 at the conclusion that they are reptiles, though admitting the fact 

 of their possessing many affinities with birds. This conclusion Mr. 

 Seeley combats with some force. When Prof. Huxley finds in the 

 skeleton of the huge Dinosaurs certain resemblances of structure to 

 birds, it is only reasonable to expect that still greater resem- 



