2 
THE GEOLOGIST. 
pressed tracks — persistent tliroiigh 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. AVe 
endeavoured to procure drawings, but without success ; the specimen 
was for sale, and no doubt its value would have been prejudiced by 
its portraits being handed about as 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 dehut 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 Arcliceopteryx 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 and pterodactyle bones, amongst the phosphate nodules of the 
Upper Greensaiid 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 discovere^the small insectivorous mammal Dromatherium, the os sacrum of a bird. 
