FOSSIL BIRDS. 
363 
mind. I could not conceive why a fish’s head should be mixed 
with the Archaeopteryx’ s bones, instead of its own. The prin- 
ciple of taking another man’s hat when you have lost yours did 
not apply. The fossil, like Conrad Gesner’s “ dragon,” or the 
Japanese monster in the Field window in the Strand, was not 
made up of the head of one thing, the body of another, and 
the tail of a third. It was not a compound of the body and 
legs of a bird, with the tail of a Ramphorhynchus and the head 
of a fish, but was a veritable fossil undoubted from end to end 
and top to bottom. How a fish’s head could get there, without 
any other trace of its body, fins, bones, or tail, was puzzling — not 
even a scale •, and the lepidoid fishes — -to which order, if any, 
this head, if it were one, must be referred— had thick, hard 
scales, which would not easily decay, and which could not, if 
there were any in the stone, be overlooked. Nothing but the 
head ! seemed so strange that I was induced to make a careful 
comparison of the supposed fish-head with the inverted beak of 
a bird, to which a close inspection had led me to think it bore 
a resemblance. 
Selecting purposely the skull of a raptorial bird, by the 
kindness of Mr. Geo. Gray, the opportunity of comparing it 
with the skull of the Aquila Bonelli has been afforded me ; and, 
as I believe, with the probability of a useful result. I speak 
diffidently, because these particular bone-remains, so obscure 
as to have passed under the keen and scrutinizing eyes of the 
Superintendent of the British Museum without detection of 
their nature, are not data upon which one could be at all dis- 
posed to speak reliantly. Still, however, having come to the 
conviction that these shattered and altered remains (PlateXVII., 
figs. 1, 2) may be the veritable beak of the Archaeopteryx, it is 
but right to make known the ground for that opinion. 
Suppose, then, that the beak with the nasal bones, which 
are thin at the part joining- on to the cranium, had rotted off, 
and had fallen, or been washed backward on to the mud, where 
they rested in an inverted and upturned position, ultimately by 
the pressure of the stony matter above becoming flattened and 
distorted. In this position the under surface of the fore part 
of the head would be seen ; and supposing the lower mandible 
to be absent, we should have this enigmatical part of the fossil 
displaying the edge of the pre- maxillary and the indented im- 
pression of the upper side of the bill, a pterygoid plate on each 
side, and the two palatals either anchylosed together, or 
pressed up flattened in the inner space. But seemingly the lower 
mandible remains, with its rami pressed down over the pterygoid 
plates, to the shape of which it nearly conforms ; so indistinct, 
however, is this portion, that it will be very difficult to assure 
oneself what it is. 
