MACKIE — ON FOSSIL BIRDS. 



205 



any more than stones or pebbles having some sort of similitude to 

 parts of birds, such as the 'cock ' of Agricola and the 'hen' of Me- 

 lius, imprinted on the schist of Illmenau. Other authors have also," 

 he continues, " regarded very gratuitously as Ornitholites some fossil 

 bones, merely on account of their lightness and slenderness, but which 

 a very slight examination would suffice to prove those of fish, small 

 quadrupeds, and sometimes even to be parts of shells and crusta- 

 ceans." 



" Thus the sulcata littoralis rostrata of Luid (Lith. Brit. t. 17) appears 

 to rne but the extremity of the dentated spine of the fin of some fish. 

 The ' beaks ' of the environs of Weimar and Jena, of which Wallerius 

 and Linnaeus speak, are only, according to Walch, who has been in that 

 country, but superficial resemblances. Rom. Delille, in the Catalogue of 

 the Cabinet of Davila, cites a beak from the environs of Reutlingen (Cat. 

 iii. p. 225), which has been adopted by Linnaeus, and a bone from Cron- 

 stadt, which appeared to him to be a fowl's ; but his ' beak' seems to be only a 

 bivalve shell showing itself obliquely at the surface of the stone. -If it 

 were a true beak, it differed prodigiously from all that we now know of 

 existing birds ; and as to the bone, there is neither description nor figure 

 in his work. Scheuchzer speaks (Mus. Dil. p. 106) of a bird's head in a 

 black schist of Eisleben ; but he adds immediately, that e one might also 

 take it for a gillyflower,' — quite sufficient to judge it by. Others (Lesser, 

 Lithotheol., Wallerius) quote the description of the environs of Massel by 

 Hermann, as if he there spoke of bones of birds; but that author really an- 

 nounces only little bones, without saying that they may be those of birds. 

 The error of compilers with respect to the petrified cuckoo (coucou) of 

 Zannichelli * is still greater and truly funny. He alludes to the fish 

 coucou, a species of Trigla {Trigla cuculus, Linn.; in Italian, pesce capone), 

 and not to the bird. Other reports have neither descriptions nor figures 

 sufficient to justify them. Such is that of Yolkman, in his ' Silesia Sub- 

 terranea' (p. 144), and those brought forward by the systematic mineralo- 

 gists. ... It is clear that incrustations do not belong to our subject ; and 

 if the accounts of them were all true, they would prove nothing as to the 

 existence of Ornitholites." 



There remained then, after these eliminations by Cuvier, in the 

 works of previous authors only the relics in certain schists, such as 

 those of (Eningen, Pappenheim, and Monte Bolca, which could have 

 any claims to a serious examination, and which could really have 

 been taken for Ornitholites by thorough naturalists. 



" Now," says Cuvier, £< nearly all that has been cited is more or less equi- 

 vocal, or, at least, is not substantiated by sufficient figures and descriptions. 

 These schists abound in all sorts of fish and other products of the sea ; the 

 bones in them are compressed. Who would dare to flatter himself as be- 

 ing able to distinguish in this state a fish-bone from a bird-bone? The 

 feathers even, are they easy to be distinguished from the Sertulariae? 

 How, then, can an inconsiderable portion be judged of, such as a member ? 

 The best authority for an investigation of this kind undeniably should 

 be that of M. Blumenbach ; but he limits himself to saying, that there 



* Dargentville, Or. p. 333, and Walch, Com. sur Know. ii. p. 1 1. 



