76 THE NATURALIST IN AUSTRALIA. 
respectively. A few of the more salient points submitted in these papers may be 
appropriately reproduced in these pages. 
Attention was more particularly directed in the foregoing communications to 
the singular bird-like aspect presented by Chlamydosaurus when running erect, as 
illustrated by the instantaneous photograph reproduced in Plate XII., fig. 5, wherein 
the superficial resemblance to a running long-tailed bird, such as a pheasant, is 
especially indicated. The writer’s comments respecting this particular illustration 
were as follows: 
Special interest is attachable to this avian-like ambulatory deportment of 
Chlamydosaurus by reason of the generally accepted interpretation that the birds are 
modified descendants of a reptilian archetype. The temptation is naturally also 
very great to institute comparisons between, and to suggest possible affinities with, 
this peculiar lizard and the extinct group of the Dinosauria, among whose 
representatives a bipedal locomotive formula was apparently a characteristic feature. 
A reference, however, to the skeleton of Chlamydosaurus does not encourage any 
sanguine anticipations that may have been previously entertained in this direction. 
It yields no indication of that peculiar avian modification of the pelvic elements, 
adapted for bipedal locomotion, that are so essentially diagnostic of the more typical 
Dinosauria, while in all general points it is indistinguishable from that of the 
ordinary Agamide. 
Though, as a consequence, no serious attempt would be justified to correlate 
the erectly progressional Chlamydosaurus with such ponderous specialised Dinosaurs 
as, say, Iguanodon or Brontosaurus, there are some few species at the lacertilian end 
of the chain that probably presented, when living, a by no means remote likeness to 
this existing type in both aspect and gait. The Compsognathus longipes of A. Wagner, 
from the lithographic stones of Solenhofen, is more especially worthy of mention in 
this connection. In size, some three feet long only, and in the proportions of the 
limbs and other points, it must have been almost a counterpart of Chlamydosaurus 
Kingt. It is particularly noteworthy of it, moreover, that, as pointed out by the late 
Prof. Huxley (“Anatomy of Vertebrata,” p. 262, Ed. 1871), the pelvic elements of 
Compsognathus correspond more essentially with those of the ordinary lizards than 
with those of the aviform Dinosauria, the pubes in particular being apparently 
directed forwards and downwards, like those of lizards. This type, as likewise 
Stenopelyx, is also referred to by the same authority (p. 263) as indicating that 
the more typical modification of the pelvis, in which the pubes are directed 
