14 
Professor Huzley in his forthcoming Paper, at the Geolo- 
gical Society. The importance of this new fossil is greatly 
enhanced by the fact that there might be a possibility of 
finding coal under the now New Red Sandstone of the 
Scotch district round Elgin. Some of you are aware, no 
doubt, that the New Red Sandstone in America contains 
numerous well-preserved and remarkable footsteps, which 
have been long supposed to have been made by birds of 
various kinds as they waded over the mud of that ancient 
Triassic sea, and were consequently the oldest traces of 
this class known. It is true that some Paleontologists 
have assigned some of them to reptiles, and quite recently 
Professor Huxley has come to the conclusion that they 
belong rather to those singular flying reptiles the Ptero- 
dactyle, and that a curious mark (the hollow groove which 
runs along some of the slabs between the footprints), 
and which had long puzzled Naturalists, was made 
by the tail as the creature crawled or walked on its 
hind legs on the surface of the sand on the sea shore. 
But it does not, of course, follow that all of these 
impressions were made by these or other reptiles, and 
some, therefore, may still have belonged to birds. Accord- 
ing to Owen and Huxley, no similar footprints have been 
hitherto recognized in the New Red Sandstone of this 
country, although in places impressions which have been 
assigned to various genera of Salamander-like reptiles 
abound, but Professor Huxley thinks they may not have 
belonged to Labyrinthodont animals at all. 
The Winter Meeting of rue WarwicksHire Narurauists’ 
anpd ArcHmoLocists’ Firetp Civus was held in the Museum, 
Warwick, (by the kind permission of the Council of the 
Warwickshire Natural History Society), on Feb. 28th, 1867. 
