On the Foot-marks of Animals in Rocks, 181 



parately. It may perhaps be thought interesting to preserve 

 both drawings in the Jardin des Plantes. 



In the large drawing of the foot-marks of Hildburghausen, it 

 will be observed that sinuous concretions are here and there re- 

 presented, of a serpentine form. The whole of the red sand- 

 stone rock is covered with them as with a net-work ; and it has 

 been thought that these were the vestiges of the plants on which 

 the animal trod. But the very great number of these forms 

 throws some doubt on this : perhaps these flattened and sinuous 

 bands are only accidental concretions, the effect of the drying 

 and of the contraction of the softer parts of the rock. As to the 

 prints themselves which the animal has left in its course, a sin- 

 gle glance at the drawing — the detached toe, directed three al- 

 ternate times towards the right and then towards the left, the 

 juxtaposition of the large and small extremities, and the straight 

 forward direction of the footmarks — appear to remove all uncer- 

 tainty. Up to the present time this phenomenon, of the foot- 

 marks of an animal in a rock which was not yet hardened, has 

 only presented itself once to the notice of geologists. I speak 

 not of the prints of Adam's feet ! nor of those of Buddha ! in 

 the island of Ceylon, nor of those of some of the early mission- 

 aries which were pointed out to my notice in the Cordilleras of 

 the New World. I allude here, not to what concerns the fables 

 of geology, but to facts which have been accurately observed — 

 the foot-marks of tortoises, our acquaintance with which is due 

 to the sagacity of Dr Buckland. (Edin Trans, vol. ii. p. 194.) 

 What gives an especial importance to the phenomenon I have 

 ventured to submit to the judgment of geologists is, the place 

 which the new red sandstone formation occupies in the chrono- 

 logical series of secondary rocks. 



Some of us may still remember the astonishment which the 

 existence of one of the Delphides, in the Stonefield slates of the 

 Jura or oolite formation, occasioned to the greatest and most il- 

 lustrious inquirer into Nature's laws. The Jceuper and muscheU 

 kalk formations, and that of the new red sandstone, are placed 

 under the oolites ; and the mammalia of Hessberg, which is the 

 subject of this note, belongs to the new red sandstone. I am 

 aware that some geologists have been tempted to attribute these 



