218 BIRDS

the Upper Oolite age; and belonging to the same _
age, and very similar in many respects, was the
American Laopteryx. The archeopteryx was as big
as a rook, with a long lizard-like tail of twenty
separate vertebra, all distinct from one another, and
all carrying a pair of feathers, one on each side; in
fact, if the tail could have been suddenly shut up in
telescopic fashion, it would have appeared like a
forty-feathered one of the usual fan shape. The
archeopteryx had the claws on its wing, which we
have already noticed among the rheas.