76 TOWN GEOLOGY. [in, 



markings must have been covered up immediately with 

 a fresh layer of mud or sand. How long since ? How 

 long since that flag had seen the light of the sun, when 

 it saw it once again, restored to the upper air by the 

 pick of the quarryman ? Who can answer that ? 

 Not I. 



Fossils are very rare in these sands ; it is not easy 

 to say why. It may be that the red oxide of iron in 

 them has destroyed them. Few or none are ever 

 found in beds in which it abounds. It is curious, too, 

 that the Keuper, which is all but barren of fossils in 

 England, is full of them in Wiirtemberg, reptiles, fish, 

 and remains of plants being common. But what will 

 interest the reader are the footprints of a strange 

 beast, found alike in England and in Germany the 

 Cheirotherium, as it was first named, from its hand- 

 like feet; the Labyrinthodon, as it is now named, from 

 the extraordinary structure of its teeth. There is little 

 doubt now, among anatomists, that the bones and 

 teeth of the so-called Labyrinthodon belong to the 

 animal which made the footprints. If so, the creature 

 must have been a right loathly monster. Some think 

 him to have been akin to lizards ; but the usual 

 opinion is that he was a cousin of frogs and toads. 

 Looking at his hands and other remains, one pictures 

 him to oneself as a short, squat brute, as big as a fat 

 hog, with a head very much the shape of a baboon, 

 very large hands behind and small ones in front, 

 waddling about on the tide flats of a sandy sea, and 

 dragging after him, seemingly, a short tail, which has 

 left its mark on the sand. What his colour was, 

 whether he was smooth or warty, what he ate, and in 

 general how he got his living, we know not. But 



