Prof. Hitchcock on Ichnolithohgy, or Fossil Footmarks. 3 1 1 



was their resemblance to the tracks ofliving birds, that every one 

 not familiar with geology, who had ever seen their tracks upon 

 mow or mud, at once pronounced the fossil footmarks to have 

 had the same origin. A careful examination, both of the fossil 

 and living footmarks, forced me to the conclusion that the first 

 and most obvious impression regarding them was sustained by fair 

 scientific analogies. But there were two objections to these views 

 hat yet remained unanswered; and which prevented several of 

 the ablest geologists and comparative anatomists of Europe from 

 lalhng m with them. The first was, that the tracks were too large 

 to have been made by a bird. The second was, that animals of 

 so high an organization as birds could not have existed so early 

 as the new red sandstone period. The discovery of the Dinornis, 

 and examination of the anatomical structure of the Apteryx, and 

 other struthious birds of southeastern Asia, have unexpectedly 

 removed both these difficulties. In regard to them, says Prof. 



y*h ine metatarsal bone of the Dinornis Nova Zealandice 

 is fully large enough to have sustained three toes, equivalent to 

 Produce impressions of the size of those of the Ornithkhnites 

 Pganteus of Prof. Hitchcock. It seems most reasonable there- 

 tore, to conclude that the Ornithkhnites are the impressions of 

 the feet of birds, which had the same low grade of organization 

 as the Apteryx and Dinornis of New Zealand, and these latter 

 Nay be regarded as the last remnants of an apterous race of birds, 

 Wl 'ch seems to have flourished at the epoch of the new red sand- 

 stone of Connecticut and Massachusetts."* To all this we can 



ow " add the evidence of the coprolites; and I see not what more 



wanting, except the bones, to complete the argument. Nor am 



y any means certain but that we already have these, — the pro- 



P ef ty of Prof. Silliman, and figured in my Final Report. It would 



he strange, if these fragments should pass under the eye of 



•chard Owen, — the man on whom so deservedly the mantle of 



. Uvier res ts, and who was able to construct the Dinornis from a 



tn g'e fragment of the shaft of a bone, — I say, it would not be 



n s e > if out of these fragments lie should be able to place be- 



e us some Dinornis of sandstone days.f 



Ajiiericu Journal of Science, Vol. xlt, p. 186. 

 We h ? 1844 — In the Lond. Ed. and Dub. Phil. Magazine for May of this year, 

 2 . ? . € an a °stract of Prof. Owen's last paper on the Dinornis, read before the 

 S ,c ul Society of London last November, founded on a second box of bones 





