496 Geological Society, 



deer and oxen in the peat itself. Footmarks of deer have been also 

 noticed in Mr. Talbot's excavations for a harbour near Margam bur- 

 rows on the east of Neath. 



Near Liverpool Mr. Cunningham has successfully continued his 

 researches begun in 1838, respecting the footsteps of Chirotherium 

 and other animals in the New Red Sandstone at Storeton Hill, on 

 the west side of the Mersey. These footsteps occur on five con- 

 secutive beds of clay in the same quarry, the clay beds are very 

 thin, and having received the impressions of the feet, afforded a 

 series of moulds in which casts were taken by the succeeding depo- 

 sits of sand, now converted into sandstone. The casts of the feet 

 are salient in high relief on the lower surfaces of the beds of sand- 

 stone, giving exact models of the feet and toes and claws of these 

 mysterious animals, of which scarcely a single bone or tooth has 

 yet been found, although we are assured by the evidence before us 

 of the certainty of their existence at the time when the New Red 

 Sandstone was in process of deposition. 



Further discoveries of the footsteps of Chirotherium and five or 

 six smaller reptiles in the New Red Sandstone of Cheshire, War- 

 wickshire and Salop, have been brought before us by Sir P. Eger- 

 ton, Mr. J. Taylor, jun., Mr. Strickland, and Dr. Ward. 



Mr. Cunningham, in a sequel to his paper on the footmarks at 

 Storeton, has described impressions on the same slabs with them, 

 derived from drops of rain that fell upon thin laminae of clay inter- 

 posed between the beds of sand. The clay impressed with these 

 prints of rain drops acted as a mould, which transferred the form of 

 every drop to the lower surface of the next bed of sand deposited 

 upon it, so that entire surfaces of several strata in the same quarry 

 are respectively covered with moulds and casts of drops of rain that 

 fell whilst these strata were in process of formation. 



On the surface of one stratum at Storeton, impressed with large 

 footmarks of a Chirotherium, the depth of the holes formed by the 

 rain drops on different parts of the same footstep has varied with the 

 unequal amount of pressure on the clay and sand, by the salient 

 cushions and retiring hollows of the creature's foot ; and from the 

 constancy of this phaenomenon upon an entire series of footmarks 

 in a long continuous track, we know that this rain fell after the 

 animal had passed. The equable size of the casts of large drops 

 that cover the entire surface of the slab, except in the parts' im- 

 pressed by the cushions of the feet, record the falling of a shower of 

 heavy drops on the day in which this huge animal had marched 

 along the ancient strand; hemispherical impressions of small drops, 

 upon another stratum, show it to have been exposed to only a 

 sprinkling of gentle rain that fell at a moment of calm. 



In one small slab of New Red Sandstone found by Dr. Ward near 

 Shrewsbury, we have a combination of proofs as to meteoric, hydro- 

 static, and locomotive phaenomena, which occurred at a time incal- 

 culably remote, in the atmosphere, the water, and the movements of 

 animals, and from which we infer with the certainty of cumulative cir- 

 cumstantial evidence, the direction of the wind, the depth and course 



