Henry Ogg Forbes

“ The leg-bone of the reptile differs from the bird's in having a well-developed fibula lying parallel to it throughout its whole length; it does not present a strongly-marked crest at its upper end, nor is the articular surface of the narrow lower extremity formed by the coalescence with the shaft of a separate bone into a pulley-shaped termination. The coalescence never takes place at all; but each retains a separate existence throughout life. In the situation of the hock in the bird the reptile has at least four distinct bones to which are articulated as many toes ”

“ Since the tail of the archæopteryx is bordered all the way by feathers, it will at once be seen that it could not leave behind a clean, simple furrow, but a broad smudge composed of many lines, while the tail of a lizard, progressing by hops and supporting itself on its hind limbs and tail, would produce just such an impression. ”

“ Owen, facile princeps among the restorers of osteological remains, who concludes that it belonged "to a warm-blooded feathered biped with wings"—to a bird, in fact—"and further, that it was web-footed and a fish-eater, and that in the catching of its slippery prey it was assisted by the peculiar armature of its jaws." Many living birds, such as the mergansers or saw-bills, have denticulations on the borders of the horny covering of the bill; but no modern bird has ever the underlying bone elevated into ridges or denticulations like those seen in the London-clay fossil. ”

“ No one who has examined the leg-bone, often called the "drumstick" (technically known as the tibia) , of a common fowl, can have failed to observe the great ridge, or prominent crest, on the front of its upper extremity, or how easily the pulley-shaped articular surface of its lower end separates off from the shaft in the young bird, especially if the bone has been boiled or macerated for some time in water. This peculiarity vanishes when the fowl attains to its full growth ”

“ No reptile ever has feathers, for, on account of a peculiarity of the circulation of the blood by which the aerated and unaërated portions mingle together, they are cold-blooded, and therefore do not require so heat-conserving a covering for the body. Most reptiles possess two pairs of legs, of which the fore limb conforms much more closely to the hind in structure than is the case between the anterior and posterior extremities of the bird. ”

“ Several very marked characteristics are to be seen in the hind-limb, to which, without entering deeply into osteological details, we may draw attention. Opening into the hollow shafts of the stronger bones—a character common to those of the wing and parts of the spine—there are to be found small pores, the air-passages by which the air-sacs, themselves extensions of the air-tubes of the lungs, are prolonged into the bones. ”

“ Starting from the groveling crocodile, we have seen that there existed gigantic crocodile-like forms, such as the giant-lizard and the iguanodon, that walked, sometimes at least, oil their hind limbs; others, like the long-necked, long-tailed compsognathus from the Solenhofen slates, that hopped on the ground after the manner of a bird; then "flying dragons," with birdlike brain and bones that cleft the air with their twenty-feet expanse of wing; next, undoubted birds, with toothed bills, the one with reptilian vertebræ, the other with a beaver-like tail ”

“ There can be no reasonable doubt but that the remains, which only through the circumstance of a happy burial have been preserved to us from the second great era of the world's history till now, are no more than a very few examples with many a blank between of the fauna which has lived and died, whose tombs no man knoweth. ”

“ Moreover, it seems easy enough to believe, after studying these forms, that, could any human eye have followed from that day to this the waxing and waning of the various animal groups, he could have constructed for us a marvelous chain of existences between reptiles and birds, the conformation of whose unknown links we can almost fabricate in our minds, between which no abrupt transitions harshly jarring would occur, no stepping-stones too wide to stride across ”

“ Birds may be characterized generally as feathered bipeds, whose mouth is modified into a longer or shorter beak incased in a horny sheath, sometimes serrated along the margin, but never presenting true teeth; whose fore-limbs assume the form of wings more or less developed, and having the hind-limbs supported on, at most, four toes, the innermost, however, in many birds being so imperfectly developed as not to reach the ground. ”

“ It is a bird in so far as its foot and sundry other parts of its skeleton are concerned; it is essentially and thoroughly a bird by its feathers: but it is much more properly a reptile in the fact that the region which represents the hand has separate bones with claws resembling those which terminate the fore-limb of a reptile. ”

“ While the formation of the spinal column in the neck and back is of the true avian type, the structure of the tail, where there have been discovered no fewer than twelve segments, is very peculiar, and differs entirely from anything hitherto seen in birds. ”

“ Our country, in common with the rest of Northern Europe, can claim to be the habitat of but few examples of this tribe, whose home is under warmer latitudes; and consequently only limited opportunities present themselves to the European student for becoming acquainted with their habits and animated forms, unless he happens to live within reach of the menageries of the Zoölogical Societies of London, Berlin, Paris, or Amsterdam; those who are unfortunately distant from such interesting educational centres must make their acquaintance in a mummified or skeletonized form in museums. ”

“ A careless or inexperienced classifier might, perchance, be tempted to relegate the lizard to a place among the amphibia, near to the newts, or vice versa; but the most unobservant of men could never locate a snake among the birds, nor set a turtle or a crocodile on the same shelf with the swallow or the golden-crested wren. ”

“ Woodward tells in a paper read before the Geological Society remarked—that it not merely sits up occasionally, but habitually runs on the ground on its hind-legs without allowing its fore-paws to touch the earth. The edges of its jawbones are elevated into enamel-tipped denticulations, which remind us of those in the jawbone of the Sheppey fossil. In the same slates which have given us the long-tailed reptilian bird and the long-necked, birdlike lizard, there has been found a three-toed bipedal track which "reminded me," said Dr. ”

“ This skeleton diverges from the bird type, however, in the absence of a "merry-thought," and in having the single hock-bone of the bird replaced by three distinct bones, fitting immovably together, of which the trifid extremity of a fowl's, for example, indicates the coalescence. The haunch-bone, moreover, indicates relationship with the reptiles, in its form and in the manner in which it unites below with its fellow of the opposite side—a feature in which it agrees with the arrangement of the corresponding bone in the crocodiles and in the rheas. ”

“ To the tortoises succeeds, according to our best classifiers, a powerful race of long-necked ancient mariners—the plesiosaurs—which hunted their prey by the sea-coasts of the geological middle ages, where they left their bones, the sole testimony to the existence of their race, which became extinct before the chalk-cliffs of England were completed, however long ago that may be. ”

“ Although between the highest and the lowest of these forms there is nothing like the close bond of union which connects the most distantly related of the birds, yet these diverse families have many characters in common, separating them from the other divisions of the animal world. Their bodies are protected by modifications of the skin into scales, enormous rugosities of almost impenetrable horny plates or flat shields of various forms. ”

“ This peculiarity in the manner of teeth-shedding is characteristic of some reptiles, each of whose teeth is merely a hollow cone tilled in the interior with a soft pulp which supplies the material for the external bony layer. When the tooth becomes worn and useless, a new one is formed beneath the shell of the first by the pulp in the interior, which gradually ousts the old from its socket. ”

“ But among the reptiles many of the bones either continue throughout life with their component parts unsolidified together, or else indicate by clear marks their lines of union, so that it is always easy to tell the number and configuration of which each is composed. ”

“ The remains included, among other bones, a number of biconcave vertebræ, that is, having the bodies, or solid central piece of the spinal segments, cup-shaped at both ends, a configuration which obtains, as every one has observed, in the divisions of the backbone of the common cod. This characteristic of the spine is frequent enough among reptiles; but it never occurs among birds met with nowadays. If among them there be any tendency that way, as there is in a few birds, the concavity is invariably found in the posterior end, the rarest form of vertebræ among reptiles. ”