Ichnology. 7o 



casts are found upon the same slab, these worms must have been very 

 numerous at the bottom of the sea, when the sandstone was in process of 

 formation. Similar impressions of annelids on the Cambrian rocks 

 are figured by Mr Morchison in pi. 27 of his great work on the Silurian 



Svstem. 



" Ichnology.— About twelve years ago we witnessed the creation of a new 

 department in geological investigations, viz. the science of ichnology, 

 founded on the evidence of footsteps made by the feet of animals upon 

 the ancient strata of the earth ; this new method commenced, with the re- 

 cognition of the footmarks of reptiles on the new red sandstone near 

 Dumfries, and not long after (1834) was followed by most curious and 

 unexpected discoveries in Saxony and America. The Chirotherium of 

 Hessberg and Ornithichnites of Connecticut were among its early results. 

 Our own country has, during the last two years, been abundantly produc- 

 tive of similar appearances in many localities. 



In recent excavations for making a dock at Pembray, near Llanelly, in 

 Pembrokeshire, tracks of deer and of large oxen have been found on clay 

 subjacent to a bed of peat, the lower peat being moulded into the foot- 

 steps ; similar impressions were also found upon the upper surface of the 

 peat beneath a bed of silt, and bones both of deer and oxen in the peat 

 itself. Footmarks of deer have been also noticed in Mr Talbot's excava- 

 tions for a harbour near Margam burrows, on the east of Neath. 



Near Liverpool Mr Cunningham has successfully continued his re- 

 searches, 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 consecutive 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 deposits of sand, now converted into sandstone. 

 The casts of the feet are salient in high relief on the lower surfaces of the 

 beds of sandstone, giving exact models of the feet and toes and claws of 

 these mysterious animals, of which scarcely a single bone or tootli 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, Warwickshire, 

 and Salop, have been brought before us by Sir P. Egerton, Mr I. 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 interposed 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 sur- 

 face 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 



