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are, as well as those of both wings, most delicately preserved, 
Professor Owen, in his wonderful description before the Royal 
Society, made no mention of the head ; and that portion was 
believed to be absent from the block. I had, on the first occa- 
sion of seeing the reverse of the Archaeopteryx block, noticed a 
ring of spar, which I considered as representing a part of the 
skull. A friend, to whom I showed it, differing in opinion, I 
did not press the point. Moreover, the block itself was under 
examination by Professor Owen at the time ; and common 
courtesy demanded that I should not use any facilities afforded 
to me by the officers of the national collection in anticipation of 
the labours of so able and so competent an anatomist. 
Some time after the reading of Professor Owe As paper, when 
Mr. John Evans, — struck with the resemblance of the concretion 
that had been formed within the ring of spar above noticed, 
to the two lobes of the brain, — made a cast of the brain- 
cam ty of a crow’s skull, my attention was re-directed to the 
subject, and I made a careful comparison of a bird’s brain with 
the Archaeopteryx concretion, and pointing out the actual parts 
of the brain shown in it, demonstrated (I suppose to the satis- 
faction of palaeontologists, as no one has disputed my conclu- 
sions) that this cast represented the fossil brain of that 
creature. This evidence was confirmatory of the previous con- 
clusions of Professor Owen, as to the ornithic nature of the 
fossil ; for the characteristics of reptilian brains are so distinct 
from those of birds, that no tyro in anatomy could mistake the 
differences. If, therefore, “ the feathered reptile” theory had 
any basis in fact, the Archaeopteryx brain should have presented 
a pterodactylian, or reptilian organization, and not have agreed 
in every typical feature with the brain of a common bird. 
Since the discovery of the brain my attention has been drawn 
to some very indistinct portions of crystalline substance on the 
surface of the slab, representing bone ; for all the bones of the 
Archaeopteryx are changed into calcareous spar, in which four 
or five little sparry points are to be seen. Mr. Evans, we are 
told, first detected these points, and assumes they are, or may 
be, teeth. From this he has inferred that the portion in ques- 
tion might be the jaws of the Archseopteryx. Mr. Davies, of 
the Palaeontological Department of the British Museum, differed 
from this view, and pointed out to me specimens of fish of the 
same geological age as the Archaeopteryx, with which he thought 
they agreed in form ; regarding the bones with which they were 
associated as the maxillaries, &c., of a fish’s head. As I was 
not, for zoological and anatomical reasons, disposed to believe 
that a bird’s beak could be armed with teeth, I was inclined to 
accept Mr. Davies’s explanation. 
The “fish-head” theory did not, however, rest easily on my 
