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recent geological date ; hence its growth does not require the presence of • 
light and air, hut only of moisture and heat, and we have here a remarkable 
coincidence with the eruptive phenomena which have brought the later 
manifestations of these marvellous organisms to the surface, and with the 
known distribution of volcanoes at no great distance from the sea ! 
We have thought it worth while to give a sketch of the general contents 
of this book, both because it has been regarded as written with a serious 
intention by critics who have blamed the author for burthening science with 
such a mass of absurdly useless names, and because it is in itself a curious 
and noteworthy phenomenon.. Its style is compared by one of its German 
critics to that of the Book of Revelations, and it must be confessed that 
there is some similarity. Had the author written one-third of the quantity, 
and illustrated his pamphlet with only two or three plates, it would have 
told much more powerfully against his opponents. Dr. Hahn is not quite a 
Swift, and even the great Dean’s irony was not appreciated by everybody.' 
We understand that Professor King has a work in preparation which 
will bear upon this subject ; it will be entitled 1 An Old Chapter of the 
Geological Record with a new Interpretation.: or Rock-metamorphism, 
especially Methylosis, and its resultant imilations of Organisms. With an 
Introduction giving a history of the controversy on the so-called Eozoon 
Canadense .’ 
Archceopteryx maci'ura . — At the meeting of the Swiss Society of Natural 
Sciences, held at St. Gall in August, 1879, Professor Qarl Yogt read a most 
interesting communication upon the second specimen of this renaarkable fossil 
organism, which was found in the lithographic slate of Pappenheim some 
years since, but of which no naturalist had hitherto .been able to make a 
careful examination. 
The genus Archceopteryx was established in 1861 .by Hermann von Meyer, 
upon the evidence of a feather found fossil an the lithographic stone of 
Solenliofen. The species was named Archceopteryx lithographica, in allusion 
to the formation in which it was found. Somewhat later a much more 
important specimen was found by a M. Haberlein in the same deposits. 
This consisted of a slab of limestone containing various parts of a feather- 
bearing creature, including limb-bones, vertebrae, traces of the skull, and 
especially a long, slender tail, from each vertebra of which sprang a pair of 
quill-feathers. This slab was subsequently purchased for the British Museum, 
and in 1863 Prof. Owen described it as a species of Yon Meyer’s genus under 
the name of Archceoptenyx macrui, w, in allusion to the length of the tail. 
Notwithstanding this remarkable peculiarity, Archceopteryx was referred to 
the class of lirds, but placed in a special group, to which the name of 
Saurune was given. The animal has always excited the greatest interest, 
from its apparent combination of reptilian and avian characters, a circum- 
stance which acquires the more importance from the occurrence of the fossils 
in beds which are so rich in Pterodactyles. It seemed that we had here in 
the same deposit the most bird-like of Reptiles and the most reptile-like of 
Birds. 
The second specimen, discovered by M. Haberlein’s son in the lithographic 
stone of Pappenheim, is now, we believe, in the Senckenbergian Museum at 
Frankfort ; but for some years after its discovery no one was allowed to see 
