Prof. Hitchcock's Rejoinder to Dr. Deane. 395 



* 



ly, to examine the feet and tracks of living animals in museums, 

 menageries, and on mud and sand, for the same purpose. This 

 was the work which must be gone through before my " scepti- 

 cism" was removed, so that I could venture " to throw down my 

 opinion" that these were bird tracks " before an incredulous pub- 

 lic." In this work I spent a considerable part of the ensuing seven 

 months ; nor was it participated in at all by Dr. Deane to my 

 knowledge after I obtained the specimens ; and before that peri- 

 od he could not have done it in the few days that elapsed after 

 his attention was called to them before he gave his opinion. In- 

 deed, during the five succeeding years, in which I toiled alone 

 in this untrodden field, I have no evidence that he did any thing 

 on the subject, except occasionally to inquire what progress I 

 made in it. Here was the tug of the war ; and if he had in- 

 tended to claim the first and highest honors of victory, he should 

 have been there shoulder to shoulder, or rather before me in 

 battle. 



Now in view of this statement, I appeal to naturalists every 

 where, (for they are the only competent jury in such a case,) 

 whether I have not given to Dr. Deane all the notice and credit 

 which belong to him ? What could I have said more, unless I 

 had stated what I know to be false, viz. that his reasoning and 

 facts convinced me, and that he had scientifically examined the 

 subject ? He speaks slightingly of my affixing his name to one 

 of the species. But naturalists know that this is one of the 

 highest honors which they can render to those who aid them 

 by specimens or otherwise ; and they never do it unless they 

 conceive the person has unusual merits, because they thus asso- 

 ciate him with veterans in science. I appeal too to naturalists 

 to say, whether the only honor I can justly claim in this "seven 

 years' war," consists, as Dr. Deane maintains, in carrying out and 

 illustrating, and very clumsily too according to him, his splendid 

 generalization, "derived from philosophical inductions," that 

 these markings are " real impressions of the feet of some bird, 



probably of the turkey species." 



To show that I have always been of the same opinion, as to 

 assistance derived from any who preceded me in this matter, I 

 quote a sentence from a Report on Ornithichnites for 1836, which 

 I sent at the close of that year to this Journal, but which was 

 subsequently withdrawn. I say there, that "it would be strange, 



