46 FOOTMARKS OF CHIROTHERIUM 



exposed prints seen at present on the floor of the quarry, are 

 far from being so distinct as in the block before you. The 

 workmen have traced these large footmarks in a continuous 

 single line, produced by the walking of one animal, for 20 or 

 30 feet over the surface of the rock, and they occur everywhere 

 at this level in the quarry. Sometimes the impressions are 

 crowded together in great numbers in a small space, as in the 

 specimen before you, where there are about twenty marks of 

 the large hind foot alone in a surface of about 5 ft. by 4 ft. ; 

 in other places the rock is marked only by the pacing of a sin- 

 gle animal across the surface. Towards the upper part of 

 this block you observe four large footmarks passing in a curv- 

 ed direction to the right side, and below them three similar 

 large footmarks directed to the left side ; but both above and 

 below these two lines, nearer the margins of the block, you 

 perceive numerous other large footmarks of the same kind. — 

 These large impressions of the hind feet, which are about 9 

 inches long, 4 inches broad, and pentadactylous, are always 

 accompanied, as in the German specimen preserved in the 

 British Museum and figured in Dr. Buckland's late Treatise, 

 by small anterior feet, about 4 inches in length and breadth, 

 also pentadactylous, and with an opposable or free toe, like the 

 hind feet. From the point of the right or left foot to the point 

 of the same foot in advance, I have commonly measured a 

 clear pace of about 3 ft. 8 inches, but the feet of the opposite 

 side of the body are here interposed, and nearly in the same 

 straight line. The similai 4 feet of this animal must therefore 

 have moved alternately, as in saurian and chelonian reptiles, 

 and not in pairs, like those of kangaroos, rodents, and other 

 leaping quadrupeds, which have this great disparity between 

 the anterior and posterior members. The impressions indi- 

 cate a free toe or thumb both on the anterior and hinder feet 

 of this animal, and the creature thus apparently endowed with 

 prehensile members has been called Chirotherium, or handed 

 beast ; but this quadrumanous character is not seen in the 

 order of marsupial quadrupeds, to which Kaup supposed the 

 unknown animal to belong. 



Associated with these anomalous markings of the Chiro- 

 therium, are numerous short club feet, with large broad claws 

 of tortoises ; some feet with the toes and claws more elonga- 

 ted and webbed, of Emydes, or wading Chelonia ; many with 

 the long free toes and slender claws of lizards ; some ap- 

 proaching in form and gait to ornithichnites, but without the 

 hind toe, and with the anterior toes approximated and col- 

 lapsed; and some resembling the long tapering feet of frogs, 

 advancing by alternate motions of their hinder webbed feet 



