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The reptile is strictly limited to one region, the bird can pass from region to region as food becomes scarce. The question of the origin of the feathers can be discussed only from the speculative point of view, as they are fully developed in the Archaeopteryx, and there is no approach toward them in any other living or fossil organism.

The greatest number is seen in the ostrich, which has eighteen caudal vertebrae in the foetal state, which are reduced to nine in the adult bird, many of them having been anchylosed together. Professor Owen therefore considers the tail of the Archaeopteryx as exemplifying the persistency of what is now an embryonic character.

The feet are not only altogether bird-like, but have the special characters of the feet of perching birds, while the body had a clothing of true feathers. Nevertheless, in some other respects, Archaeopteryx is unlike a bird and like a reptile. There is a long tail composed of many vertebrae.

Evans detected on the slab what seems to be the impression of the cranium and beak, much resembling in size and shape that of the jay or woodcock. This valuable specimen is now in the British Museum, and has been called by Professor Owen Archaeopteryx macrura.

Thus, for instance, the well-known archaeopteryx is not, as was maintained, a connecting link between reptile and bird, but a member of a blindly ending side branch. In fact palaeontological research has proven incapable of finding the transitions between different species, clearly determined by the theory. But the overwhelming abundance of matter called for new endeavors to master it.

The bird was the famous Archaeopteryx, found in the Solenhofen slate, and the first butterfly, to use an Irishism, was a moth, a sphinx moth, apparently about the size of the Convolvulus sphinx moth.

Occasionally then the I.G. would retaliate with reminiscences of Ah Fong making the Grand Tour of Europe with him in 1878 how he kissed his hands to the winning French chambermaids, and called out "Allewalla, Allewalla!" In this age of uninterested or inanimate "helps," a servitor like Ah Fong is about as rare as an archaeopteryx.

B. Two caudal vertebrae of same; natural size. C. Single feather, found in 1861 at Solenhofen, by Von Meyer, and called Archaeopteryx lithographica; natural size. E. Profile of caudal vertebrae of same; one-third natural size. e, e. Direction of tail-feathers when seen in profile. f.

Nor do I think it likely that the transition from the reptile to the bird has been effected by such a form as Archaeopteryx.

These so-called slates are composed of a fine grained calcareous mud which has hardened into lithographic stone, and in which organic remains are almost as well preserved as they would be if they had been imbedded in so much plaster of Paris. They have yielded the Archaeopteryx, the existence of which was first made known by the finding of a fossil feather, or rather of the impression of one.