2 



THE GEOLOGIST. 



pressed tracks — persistent through 2000 feet of stone — to the time 

 when a solitary bone was entombed in the sandy mud of the Creta- 

 ceous Sea. # 



A little time ago the geological and palseontological worlds were 

 astonished by the announcement of a feathered reptile. "We re- 

 corded the reports without comment ; the reason was, we could not 

 rightly reconcile the statements to our conscientious content. We 

 endeavoured to procure drawings, but without success ; the specimen 

 w r as for sale, and no doubt its value would have been prejudiced by 

 its portraits beiug handed about as 11 cartes de visite" in the houses 

 of the learned. The accounts that reached us were second-hand and 

 by hearsay. Professor Wagner, on his death-bed, wrote the notice 

 in the ' Sitzungberichte ' of Munich, from the description of a M. 

 Witte, who had derived his information from a sight of the specimen 

 in M. Haberlein's possession. No doubt the mysterious announce- 

 ments of a feathered reptile have enhanced the value of the Pappen- 

 heim specimen to its maximum extent, and have caused it to fetch a 

 price which it never would have fetched had it made its debut natu- 

 rally as a bird ; but its appearance in the sensation character of a 

 feathered reptile made it a mysterious attraction, and caused it to 

 have, in theatrical phrase, " a great run." 



This singular fossil — a long-tailed bird — is now before us. At 

 page 32 we give a report of the paper read by Professor Owen, before 

 the Eoyal Society, on November 20, in which a minute description will 

 be found. Since that time the specimen has been placed in the Gallery 

 of the British Museum, where geologists who feel an interest in this 

 remarkable discovery — and many unscientific persons, too, attracted 

 to it by the notoriety it has attained — have flocked to inspect the 

 blocks of lithographic limestone which contain the singular remains 

 of the Archceopteryx macrurus. 



Professor Owen and Mr. Waterhouse were both satisfied of its 

 true ornithic nature long before the specimen was purchased for 

 the National Collection, and we by no means regret the exceptional 

 expenditure of so large a sum as has been given for it. It is indeed 

 a most remarkable object, and as such, it was most praiseworthy 

 of those officers to recommend its purchase, and of the trustees to ven- 

 ture the risk of blame from parsimonious economists, by acquiring it 



* Found, with turtle aud pterodactyle bones, amongst the phosphate nodules of the 

 Upper Greensaud at Cambridge. It is reported that there has been discovered in the so- 

 called " Permian," but really " Rhsetic " rocks of South Carolina, in which Dr. Emmons 

 had discovered the small insectivorous mammal Dromatherium, the os sacrum of a bird. 



