Letters, Extracts, Notices, fyc. 695 
of some mistake having occurred as to the beds from which 
the fossil was originally obtained, and suggested that the 
specimen, which much resembled the Stonesfield fossils both 
in the appearance of the bone and in the matrix, might have 
been accidentally included with true Stonesfield remains under 
a common number in the British Museum. He also called 
attention to the fact that the occurrence of a bird allied to 
recent forms in Jurassic beds would involve a complete 
change in all the accepted ideas of evolution. Professor 
Seeley admitted that the matrix of the new fossil differed 
slightly from that of other Stonesfield specimens, but gave 
reasons for believing that all the specimens from the Earl of 
Enniskillen’s collection had been obtained from Stonesfield. 
The results of further enquiry into the matter have been 
communicated to me by Dr. Andrews, by whose permission 
1 add the following extract from a letter of his : — 
“ Since the paper was read, I and several others have very 
carefully examined the specimen and the matrix, and I think 
it may be said to be absolutely certain that the bone is the 
humerus of a species of Paleelodus. Probably it is P. am- 
biguus, an extremely common species, of which we possess 
several humeri identical in structure with Prof. Seeley’s 
fossil. This species is described by Milne-Edwards in his 
f Oiseaux fossiles de la France/ vol. ii. p. 60 ; it is a 
generalized Flamingo, exactly as Prof. Seeley has stated his 
fossil was. The matrix is the ordinary freshwater limestone 
of the Puy-de-D6me, of Oligocene (Aquitanian) age. It has 
much superficial resemblance to some beds of the Stonesfield 
Slate. We have a number of undoubtedly Oligocene bones 
from Central France in a similar matrix ; in fact we have a 
humerus of the same species in almost the same rock.” 
I think this extract is sufficiently important to justify my 
calling the attention of ornithologists to it. It will be seen 
that as regards the affinities of the fossil, on which Professor 
Seeley’s opinion has the weight of an authority, his views 
have been fully confirmed, but that he has been misled by 
the specimen having been, by some accident, associated with 
fossils from another locality. I should add that only a short 
