300 LEAVES FROM THE 



of Dr. Hitchcock's giant were broad and thick. The foot- 

 marks of that gigantic batrachian (Salamandro'ides, 

 Jager — Mastodonsaurus and Phytosaurus, of the same 

 — Chirotheriwin, Kaup) were impressed on a shore ; and 

 in some of the specimens of that petrified strand were 

 the impressions of drops of rain that had fallen upon the 

 strata while in the process of formation. On the surface 

 of one at Storeton, where the impressions of the foot- 

 marks were large, the depth of the holes made by the 

 rain-drops on different parts of the same footstep varied 

 with the unequal pressure on the clay and sand, accord- 

 ing to the salient cushions and retiring hollows of the 

 animal's foot. The constancy of these appearances upon 

 an entire series of foot-prints in a long and continued 

 track, showed that the rain had fallen after the creature 

 had passed. 



The equable size of the casts of large drops that cover the enth'e 

 surface of the slab (says Dr. Buckland, in his Address to the 

 Geological Society of London on this phenomenon), except in the 

 parts impressed by the cushions of the feet, records the falling of a 

 shower of heavy drops on the day in which this huge animal had 

 marched along the antient 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 [where the remains which will presently be alluded to 

 were found], we have a combination of proofs as to meteoric, 

 hydrostatic, and locomotive phenomena, which occurred at a time 

 incalculably remote, in the atmosphere, the water, and the quarter 

 towards which the animals were passing ; the latter is indicated by 

 the direction of the footsteps which form their tracks : the size and 

 curvatures of the ripple-marks on the sand, now converted to sand- 

 stone, show the depth and direction of the current : the oblique 

 impressions of the rain-drops register the point from which the 

 wind was blowing at or about the time when the animals were 

 passing. 



But how was this record so firmly imprinted on the 

 stone? The answer is ready from the same eloquent and 

 accurate oracle: — 



