Geological Evidence of Origin of Species. 209 



The Vermonter thinks his features are like the pictures 

 of the kiug, though others do not see the resemblance. 

 But John hunts up a portrait of Obadiah Plantagenet, 

 who came over in the Mayflower. On a close examination, 

 it is found that John has some features in common with 

 Obadiah, and that Obadiah has other features in common 

 with his royal ancestor; and. by means of this intermediate 

 link, a relationship between John Plantagenet, of Vermont, 

 and Richard of York is shown to be not improbable. Now, 

 superficially, no two classes of vertebrata appear more dis- 

 tinct than birds and reptiles. That an eagle should be 

 allied by blood with a serpent seems a wild flight of fancy. 



But geology has supplied us with numerous links con- 

 necting the two classes. I will take a few examples out of 

 many. The Pterodactyl of the Mesozoic periods is an 

 undoubted reptile, yet it has the breast bone of a bird, the 

 bones were hollow and filled with air, and one of the fingers 

 was enormously prolonged so as to give support to a flying 

 membrane. In Rampfwrhyncus, an allied genus, there ap- 

 pear to have been no teeth in the fore part of the jaw, and 

 it is probable that the parts were sheathed in horn, so as 

 to form a kind of beak. The order Deinosauria consists of 

 Mesozoic reptiles with affinities with the ostrich family, espe- 

 cially in the shape of the pelvis. In South Africa has been 

 discovered a curious order of reptiles, some of which were 

 furnished with a beak-like mouth, and were apparently 

 destitute of teeth. As we have bird-like reptiles, so geology 

 tells us of reptile-like birds. The best known of these is 

 the Archazopteryx of the Upper (or Middle) Oolite of Solen- 

 hofen. This curious bird was provided with a lizard-like 

 tail, longer than the body, and composed of separate verte- 

 brae, each of which carried a pair of quill feathers. It also 

 possessed two claws to each wing, a character which, whether 

 reptilian or mammalian, never occurs in living birds. Now 

 I do not argue that these intercalations prove the evolution 



Trans. viii.~] 27 



