Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1880-06-03

as Lord Dundreary would have called
it, was obtained soon after on a slab
of the same limestone in much greater
detail it wanted, however, the head,
and was in several other respects de.
fective. The third and only other
specimen yet found is said to be
nearly perfect, and is the one just
described by Professor Vogt, whose
description supplements, and to some
extent corrects, that given by Owen
of the specimen now in the British
Museum. The Arch@opteryx had
the legs and feet of bird, and from
the structure of these it was probably
percher its wings, however, were
unlike anything found among exist.
ing birds. The wing OF q bird cor
responds to the foreleg of quadru-
ped and to the arm OF a man, but in
a bird the bones which correspond
to those of our hand, instead of being
free as they are in the human fingers,
are bound up, with the exception of
the last joint of the thumb, in
sheath of skin, and form foundation
for certain of the wing feathers. In
the wing of the Arch@opteryx as
now known, there were three digits,
each of them free, and bearing true
reptilian claws at their extremity.
They thus show no special adapta-
ton to the support OF wings, and had
the feathers, therefore, not been pre-
served, no one could have suspected
from study of the skeleton that the
creature had been furnished with
such organs of flight. The feathers,
however, are Enthusiastically ornithic,
covered for half their length with
fine down, and none of them project
ing beyond the others. In the new
specimen the feathers are all in place,
and the wings are uafolded as ii in
flight, bu. from the rounded appear
ance they present, reminding one of
the wings of fowl, it is probable
that the Archeopteryx had compar-
atively weak flying powers. 1t is
also supposed by Vogt, from certain
faint indications, to have had dow
ny collar at the base of It's neck like
that of the existing condor, and it
undoubtedly "feathery breeches"
like those of the falcons no traces
however, of body feathers appear.
on this slab, which has preserved
even the smallest details of the fine
down 1t may be concluded, there,
fore, that, with the exception of the
parts already mentioned, the Archa
opteryx was not, as it is usually rep.
resented in drawings to have been,
feather clad. This earliest of feath-
cred creatures is now known also to
have had true teeth /; its most strik.
ingly reptilian feature, however, is
its tail. In existing birds the tail is
short, consisting of only a few verte-
bre, two or three of which coalesce
to form the last or "ploughshare"
bone which gives attachment to the
quill feathers of the tail. In Archie.
opteryx there are twenty narrow
elongated Yertebre, which gradually
taper, as they do in reptiles, towards
the extremity, while to each vertebra
is attached pair of feathers. Ac.
cording to Professor Vogt-to quote
from recent digest of his paper in
the Annals and Magazine Of Natural
History-"it is quite unnecessary to
discuss the question whether Archa.
opteryx is to be classed among birds
or reptiles. 1t is neither one nor the
other ; it const tutes an intermediate
type of the most strongly marked |
character. The Archnopteryx |
is undoubtedly one of the most i'm.
portant sign posts on the road which |
has been followed by the class OF
birds in diferentiating itself more
and more from the reptiles from
which it originated. A bird by its
and hinder limbs, the
Arch@opteryx is reptile by all the |
rest of its organization its conform
alton can only be understood by &C
cepting the evolution of the birds by
a progressive development from GER
tain types of reptiles