74 Dr Buckland's Address. 



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 foot- 

 marks of a chirothcrium, 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 re- 

 tiring' hollows of the creature's foot ; and, from the constancy of this 

 phenomenon 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 impressed by the cushions of the feet, record 

 the falling of a shower of heavy drops on the day in which this huge ani- 

 mal had marched along the ancient strand ; hemispherical imju-essions of 

 small drops, upon another stratum, shew 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, hydrostatic, 

 and locomotive phenomena, which occurred at a time incalculably re- 

 mote, in the atmosphere, the water, and the movements of animals, and 

 from which we infer with the certainty of cumulative circumstantial evi- 

 dence, the direction of the wind, the depth and course of 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 sandstone, 

 shew 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. 



Demonstrations founded solely upon this kind of circumstantial evi- 

 dence were duly appreciated, and are well exemplified, by the acute au- 

 thor of the story of Zadig ; who, from marks he had noticed on the sand, 

 of its long cars, and teats, and tail, and from irregular impressions of the 

 feet, declared the size and sex, recent parturition and lameness, of a bitch 

 he had never seen ; and who, from the sweeping of the sand, and marks 

 of horse-shoe nails, and a streak of silver on a pebble that lay at the bot- 

 tom of a single footstep, and of gold upon a rock against which the animal 

 had struck its bridle, inferred that a horse, of whose existence he had no 

 other evidence, had recently passed along the shore, having a long switch 

 tail, and shod with silver, with one nail wanting upon one shoe, and hav- 

 ing a bridle studded with ?old f twenty carats' value. 



In addition to the commencement of Mr Bowcrbank's publication on 

 the fossil fruits and seeds of the London clay, before alluded to, we 

 have hailed with satisfaction the announcement by Professor Henslow 

 and Mr Hutton, of their intended continuation of the fossil flora of 

 Great Britain, conducted for some years by Dr Lindley and Mr Hutton, 

 and lately suspended. 



A dictionary of the terms and language of geology has long been a de- 



