MACKIE — THE AERONAUTS OF THE SOLEWnOFEN AGE. 7 
18, just where we suspect the head might have been. The cranium, 
it is true, may be still in one or other of the slabs, or it never may 
have been in either at all. If the bird is the rejected or lost prey of 
some stronger creature, the head may have been torn off, and with 
the attached neck, may have been left on the dry ground else- 
where, or deposited in some other place miles away. But the pre- 
sence or known existence of the head would have prevented any 
reptilian mystery ; and the current statement that the head of the 
Guadaloupe human skeleton in the British Museum is in a museum 
in South Carolina, causes one to feel a silent hope that by no similar 
secretive principle may we be astonished hereafter by the discovery 
of the head of Archaeopteryx in some Continental museum. In 
the block there is a semicircular portion, apparently of bone, which we 
have suspected might be a part of the skull ; but we certainly should 
experience something like a sensation of relief, if we were to learn that 
through the aid of the Museum lapidary, the head was yet existent in 
the matrix. However, for what we have got we ought to be thankful ; 
and especially are our praises due to the learned Superintendent of 
the Natural History Department, for his able, lucid, perspicuous, and 
convincing interpretation of these extraordinary remains. 
Since the above was written, Mr. Henry Woodward has kindly 
handed us the cast (fig. 1, p. 1) of the interior of the skull of a 
carrion crow, which has been prepared by Mr. John Evans, F.S.A., 
who was struck with the resemblance, as he fancied, between the 
brain of a bird and the little limestone concretion within the bone- 
mark to which we have referred. 
This suggestion was so probable, that we at once instituted a close 
comparison, and with the assistance of Mr. Carter Blake, we believe 
we have decisively made out the actual parts of the brain indicated 
by that seemingly unimportant protuberance, and for the apt means 
of the determination of which too much praise cannot be given to 
Mr. Evans. The story then, as we read it, is that a portion of the 
skull, and what may be termed the fossil brain, still remain in the 
slab. "We will now attempt to describe this protuberance in the 
limestone as a fossil brain. The anterior part of the brain is pre- 
sented vertically to the spectator, or stands out perpendicularly from 
the face of the stone. At its apex the site of the olfactory lobes are 
very evident, as is also, running down towards them, the median line. 
The inturned edge of the cerebral hemispheres is also easily made 
out, and some trace of the optic lobe beneath the brain may perhaps 
