338 
POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
Although their remains in a fossil state are but few in number, 
they nevertheless possess a remarkable degree of interest which 
even the more abundant relics of other classes cannot supersede. 
Ornitholites have been met with in at least a dozen different 
localities in the Tertiary deposits of Europe, and also at two or 
three places in our own island. 
Specimens have been obtained from the Miocene of Allier 
in France, which M. Alphonse Milne-Edwards * has referred to 
about seventy species of birds of various groups, some of which 
do not belong to the present fauna. Parrots and Trogons in- 
habited the woods ; the edible swifts built their nests among 
the rocks ; a 66 secretary bird,” a marabout stork, a flamingo, 
an ibis, and other birds served to give to these localities in 
early Miocene times a strikingly South African facies. The 
bird-bones of the Mayence Basin present a complete similarity 
to those of Allier. 
Bird-remains occur also in the Miocene of (Eningen, near 
the Lake of Constance ; in the Upper Eocene of Puy de Dome, 
Perignat, and Auvergne ; from the Eocene of Montmartre and 
Meudon, near Paris, whence M. Alphonse Milne-Edwards has 
also determined several new genera of birds, as the Cryptomis 
and the Palceogithalus , whilst the Gypsornis is described as 
the giant of the family of “ Pails,” being as large as a stork. 
From our own Eocene of Hordwell and Sheppey Prof. Owen 
has recorded the genera Halcyornis and Lithornis ; also a large 
struthious bird of the size of the living ostrich (the Dasornis 
Londiniensis'), and a still more remarkable bird, the Odonto - 
pteryx toliapicus , to be presently referred to more fully. 
With the two exceptions of the Eocene slate-rocks of the 
Canton Grlaris, in which the almost entire skeleton of a small 
passerine bird, about the size of a lark, has been discovered, 
and the gypsum quarries of Montmartre, where two or three 
connected skeletons of different species of birds have been 
found, these remains consist of detached bones or fragments 
only, or of eggs or feather impressions.f 
Parts of a large 66 fossil ” bird have been obtained from the 
Sewalik Hills, India ; whilst Madagascar has yielded to the 
studies of M. Alphonse Milne-Edwards and others, remains of 
three species of JEpyornis , whose affinities are clearly recog- 
nisable with the Dinornis and Apatornis of Hew Zealand. 
In the recent deposits of the Mascarenes the remains of the 
* u Aimales des Sciences Naturelles,” 1871, ser. 5, Zoologie, tom. xvi. 
t See u Ueber Fossile Eier nnd Federn,” von Hermann von Meyer. 
“ Palaeontographica.” Cassel, (1865-68), pp. 223-259, pi. 36-38, in which 
eggs and feathers are described and figured from about ten separate locali- 
ties. 
