THE INTELLECTUAL OBSERYEE. 



DECEMBER, 18 6 9. 



ON A FEATHERED FOSSIL FROM THE LITHO- 

 GRAPHIC LIMESTONE OF SOLENHOFEN. 



{Lately acquired for the British Museum.') 



BY HENRY WOODWARD, F.Z.S. 



{With a Coloured Plate.) 



It has always been held that the form and proportions of any 

 symmetrical object may be inferred from the inspection of a 

 part or fragment of the whole. The disciples and admirers of 

 Cuvier have often asserted that it was possible for those who 

 (like that great anatomist) possessed the requisite knowledge, 

 to reconstruct the entire frame of any extinct animal from a 

 single bone, or tooth, or claw. These notions went, doubtless, 

 far beyond the pretensions of the illustrious founder of the 

 science of comparative osteology, and they have led to mis- 

 takes and disappointment ; but they serve to show the strength 

 of the conviction which long ago found expression in the pro- 

 verb, " ex pede Hercidem." 



That the existence of birds at the period of the Secondary 

 rocks should have been first intimated by their footprints, may 

 seem strange ; but as far back as 1835 a notice appeared in 

 Silliman's American Journal of Science, stating that Dr. Deane 

 had discovered impressions resembling the feet of birds upon 

 some slabs of red sandstone from Connecticut. Dr. Hitchcock 

 was the first who submitted these tracks to careful scientific 

 examination, and concluded that they had been produced " by 

 the feet of birds which must have been at least four times larger 

 than the ostrich." These gigantic three-toed footprints have 

 been found in more than twenty places, scattered through a 

 tract nearly eighty miles long, and they are repeated through 

 strata more than one thousand feet thick.* Upwards of two 

 thousand of the Ornithiclmites had been observed and exa- 

 mined by Professor Hitchcock twenty years ago ; but notwith- 

 standing the most diligent and careful search, not a vestige of 

 the organic remains of either bird or pterodactyle have as yet 

 been discovered in these beds. Numerous coprolites occur in 



* Lyell's Manual of Geology, fifth edition, p. 348. 

 VOL. II, — NO. V. Z 



