﻿62 Prof. Hitchcock on Fossil Footmarks, Lincolnite, fyc. 



nests, it is so improbable that such should have escaped observation, 

 that I have come to the conclusion, that the great nests seen by 

 Cook and Flinders, belonged to some aquatic birds ; and at all 

 events, are too remotely related to the discovery of the great 

 Ornitholites of New Zealand, to merit notice in a rigid scientific 

 attempt to reconstruct the lost feathered giants of that island. 



I have forwarded by Messrs. Wiley & Putnam, booksellers, 

 a copy of my paper on Dinornis, to my respected correspondent, 

 Prof. Silliman ; and a copy by a private opportunity, to yourself. 

 Your beautiful discovery of the Ornithichnites has always been 

 in my thoughts, while working out the New Zealand bones. 

 I earnestly hope that you may be successful in obtaining some 

 characteristic fossils from the same sandstone. 



Dr. Dana's skilful analysis has yielded a beautiful and most 

 unexpected corroboration of the accuracy of your original deduc- 

 tions of the class of animals to which the footprints belonged. 

 We must bear in mind, however, that in all the Ovipara, in 

 the Cloaca, the urine blends with the excrement. 



I remain very truly yours, Richard Owen. 



I hope you will give your readers, ere long, some account of 

 Prof. Owen's paper on the Dinornis.* It is certainly the most 

 sagacious and beautiful example of reasoning in comparative 

 anatomy, that has ever fallen under my notice ; and impresses us 

 deeply with the marvellous, and yet mathematically accurate 

 character of that curious science* The supposed connection be- 

 tween the extinction of the Dinornis, and the introduction of 

 cannibalism into New Zealand, is very interesting in a moral 

 point of view. 



The fact quoted by Mr. Owen from Mr. Darwin, that no mam- 

 mal, except a small rat, exists in New Zealand, which is more 

 than seven hundred miles long, may perhaps show us why we 

 have not yet found the remains of any vertebral animal (with 

 one or two exceptions) in the sandstone of the Connecticut val- 

 ley ; although birds, allied to the Dinornis, must have been very 

 numerous. 



From the locality of footmarks in Northampton I have re- 

 cently obtained a slab, considerably broken indeed, which exhib- 



* An abstract of this paper may be looked for in the Bibliographical Notices of 

 this number. — Eds. 



