30 Human Foot-Prints in Solid Limestone. 
great geological formations; the coal measures; the new red 
sandstone ; the lias and oolite; the chalk; the tertiary, and the 
diluviam. These deposits form a geological series commonly 
three or four thousand feet in thickness, and embrace six vast 
and strongly marked epochs, during each of which, distinct races 
of animals have successively arisen, existed, and become extinct. 
The time necessary to these changes we can hardly conceive, 
much less calculate. Add the supposition usually entertained by 
geologists (based on the gigantic and ultra-tropical vegetable 
growth necessary to produce the: superincumbent beds of coal) 
that the temperature of the globe and its atmosphere during the 
deposition of these secondary formations, was unfit for animals 
with lungs; and the idea of a human fossil existing in ancient 
limestone must appear at variance with the best ascertained facts 
which the industry of the modern geologist has supplied to us, 
and with the most legitimate inferences to be deduced therefrom. 
Nothing less than some fossil phenomenon ‘of a character so un- 
equivocal that its origin admits of but one explanation, ought, 
under these manifold. difficulties and. one BARS ee to-win our 
confidence or command our belief. 
True, that the attempt to- neni ich the artificial sorigri ‘of 
these impressions is not without its difficulties. Yet of difficul- 
ties, as of eviis, let us choose the least. It appears to me much 
less improbable that some aboriginal artist should have exhibited 
unlooked-for skill. in intagliating a rock, than that. man should 
have been coéval with the crustacea. 
The argument deduced from the excellence of the workman- 
ship would be more difficult of reply, did these impressions rep- 
resent almost any part of the human body other: than the foot. 
What simpler or better outline to.guide the:inexperienced hand 
of a native workman, than the mark-which is left‘on a smooth 
uci rock by a moistened foot. . With:such an outline as his 
first guide, and with the constant opportunity of testing the ac- 
: curacy of the progressive work, by applying to it the naked foot, 
there is surely no insuperable difficulty i in supposing an aboriginal 
sculptor, (imbued perhaps, with that inborn love and taste for his 
art, biter we are not justified in attributing exclusively to the 
ian variety of the human nee to f have’ eae even 
with such rude tools as an Indian could 
a natural and faith representation. 
