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of the greatest importance. Upon the part which may belong 
to the hinder part of the skull I hazard no opinion. Much 
more important is the jaw. Teeth of this sort I do not know 
in the lithographic stone. There exists no similarity between 
them and the teeth of Pterodactyles. The nearest likeness is 
to the teeth of my family of Acrosawrus , namely, to the Aero- 
saurus Frischmanni , Meyer (“ Eeptilen des Lithog. Schiefers,” 
p. 116, t. 12, f. 7-8), from the lithographic slate of Bavaria, in 
which however the crown is lower and longer from back to 
front. In Fleur osaur us Meyeri (“ Palseontographica,” x. p. 
37, t. 7 ) which belongs to the same family, the teeth possess less 
likeness. One might also be reminded of the teeth of the 
Geosaurus Soemmeringi , Meyer (“ Deutsch. Akad. Munich,” 
1816, p. 36 ; Cuvier, Oss. foss. pi. 249, fig. 2-6), which, how- 
ever, are much longer. 
“ From this it would appear that the jaw really belongs to 
the Archaeopteryx. An arming of the jaw with teeth would 
contradict the view of the Archaeopteryx being a bird or an 
embryonic form of bird. But, after all, I do not believe 
that Grod formed his creatures after the systems devised by our 
philosophical wisdom. Of the classes of birds and reptiles as we 
define them, the Creator knows nothing, and just as little of a 
prototype, or of a constant embryonic condition of the bird, 
which might be recognised in the Archaeopteryx. The Archaeo- 
pteryx is of its kind just as perfect a creature as other creatures, 
and if we are not able to include this fossil animal in our system, 
our short-sightedness is alone to blame.” 
It will, of course, be observed that this opinion of Von Meyer 
is founded on my drawings alone, and is therefore of course sub- 
ject to a revision on an examination of the slab itself. But there 
certainly appears to be a case made out for careful investigation 
by those more competent than I am to form an opinion in such 
a case. Its extreme importance as bearing upon the great ques- 
tion of the origin of species must be evident to all, and I for one 
see no reason why a creature presenting so many anomalies as 
the Archaeopteryx, all of which, however, tend to link together 
the two great classes of birds and reptiles, should not also have 
been endowed with teeth, either in lieu of, or combined with a 
beak, in the same manner as in Rhamjphorhynchus , with which 
it exhibits other affinities. The tooth-like serrations in the 
beaks of many birds — and notably in the Merganser serrator 
— -where they closely approach in character to real teeth, though 
connected only with the horny covering and not with the 
bones of the mandible, are sufficient to prove that the presence 
of feathers does not of necessity imply that the beak with which 
to preen them should be edentulous. 
A reference to our figure of the Merganser (Plate CXXV., 
