174 Fossil Footsteps. 
2. Fossil Footsteps in Sandstone and Graywacke; by Prof. 
pwarp Hircncocx. 
TO THE EDITOR. 
Sir—During the last autumn, my attention was excited afresh to 
‘the subject of fossil footmarks, in consequence of the discovery of 
several new localities in the valley of the Connecticut river, both in 
Massachusetts and Connecticut. I have now found them along that 
river, a distance of eighty miles, at numerous quarries; and as the 
result of my recent examinations, 1 am now prepared to describe 
fourteen new species—double the number described in my first pa- 
per, contained in this Journal for January, 1836. In general they 
are more distinctly marked upon the rock than those formerly de- 
scribed; and some of them bear in some respects so near a resem- 
blance to the feet of living Saurians, that I have denominated them 
Sauroidichnites. But I have no certain evidence as yet, that any 
of them were made by four-footed animals, although in respect to 
two or three species I have strong suspicions that such was the fact. 
I have sometimes thought they might have been made by Pterodac- 
tyles; yet they have in general fewer toes than those described by 
Cuvier and Buckland. 
Within a few weeks past, I have found on the flag-stones in the 
city of New York, some marks which I suspect were made by the 
feet of a didactylous quadruped, which, like the Marsupialia, moved 
by leaps. The rock is slaty graywacke, from the banks of the Hud- 
son, between Albany and the Highlands. They are by no means as 
distinct as the footmarks on the new red sandstone above described ; 
nor do I feel very confident of the correctness of the opinion ex- 
pressed above ; but as I discovered them in several places, both in 
New York and Brooklyn, and found their appearance similar, I can- 
not come to any other conclusion at present, than the one just named ; 
although the inference which follows from it, viz. that quadrupeds 
existed during the deposition of the graywacke group, seems too 
much like a dream not to excite strong doubts as to the correctness 
of that conclusion. 
I had prepared a paper, containing a full account of all the fossil 
footmarks mentioned above, with numerous drawings, both of these 
and of the tracks of living birds. Yet I have concluded it will be 
wiser to delay its publication till I have re-examined some of the lo- 
calities next summer, should life and health be spared. Yet I take 
