CHAPTER XXVIII 



"\ TOTES and Queries, 7-8-508: 



JL\ A correspondent who had been to Devonshire writes for 

 information as to a story that he had heard there: of an occur- 

 rence of about thirty-five years before the date of writing: 



Of snow upon the ground of all South Devonshire waking up 

 one morning to find such tracks in the snow as had never before 

 been heard of "clawed footmarks" or "an unclassifiable form" 

 alternating at huge but regular intervals with what seemed to be 

 the impression of the point of a stick but the scattering of the 

 prints amazing expanse of territory covered obstacles, such as 

 hedges, walls, houses, seemingly surmounted 



Intense excitement that the track had been followed by hunts- 

 men and hounds, until they had come to a forest from which the 

 hounds had retreated, baying and terrified, so that no one had dared 

 to enter the forest. 



Notes and Queries, 7-9-18: 



Whole occurrence well-remembered by a correspondent: a badger 

 had left marks hi the snow: this was determined, and the excite- 

 ment had "dropped to a dead calm in a single day." 



Notes and Queries, 7-9-70: 



That for years a correspondent had had a tracing of the prints, 

 which his mother had taken from those in the snow in her garden, 

 in Exmouth: that they were hoof-like marks but had been made 

 by a biped. 



Notes and Queries, 7-9-253: 



Well remembered by another correspondent, who writes of the 

 excitement and consternation of "some classes." He s?ys that a 

 kangaroo had escaped from a menagerie "the footprints being so 

 peculiar and far apart gave rise to a scare that the devil was 

 loose." 



We have had a story, and now we shall tell it over from con- 

 temporaneous sources. We have had the later accounts first very 

 largely for an impression of the correlating effect that time brings 



293 



