OF A FORMER WORLD. 25 



Advancing upwards until we arrrive at the sands of the 

 ancient Triassic ocean the saliferous ; * or new red sand- 

 stone formation, we behold appearances as unexpected and 

 startling, us the human footstep to Crusoe on his desolate 

 island the tracks of bipeds colossal birds of which 

 no other vestiges remain, and to which the existing order of 

 creation affords no parallel. Tracks of this description 

 were found, in 1828, on new red sandstone, in the quarry of 

 Corn Cockle Muir, in Dumfrieshire, at a depth of forty- 

 five feet. After removing a large slab which presented foot- 

 prints, perhaps the very next stratum, at a distance of a 

 few feet or inches, exhibited the same phenomenon. Hence 

 the process by which the impressions were made on the sand, 

 and subsequently buried, must have been repeated at suc- 

 cessive intervals. In another quarry in similar strata, near 

 the town of Dumfries, the same marks were discovered,, and 

 in one instance a track extended from twenty to thirty feet 

 in length. Dr. Buckland refers these impressions to land 

 tortoises. In 1834, an account was published of some re- 

 markable footsteps in the new red sandstone at Hesseburg, 

 near Kildberghausen, in Saxony, at a depth of sixty-nine 

 feet. The largest track appears to have been macle by an 

 animal whose "hind foot was eight inches long. It has re- 

 ceived the name of Chirotttkrium, from Professor Kaup, 

 owing to the resemblance of its impressions to the shape of 

 the human hand ; but some of the tracks appear to have 

 been made by tortoises, and M. Link suggests, that others 

 are to be referred to gigantic batrachians, or frogs and sal- 

 amanders. 



The new red sandstone overlies the coal : it is about 9000 

 feet in thickness and yields evidence of similar conditions 

 in the medium of deposition, as in the old red sandstone pe- 

 riod. It contains besides red and variegated sandstones, 

 marl| and conglomerates, immense beds of rock-salt, and 



* Saliferous, containing salt. t Marl, a compound of clay and lima 



