714 



GEOLOGY. 



and appear to have been impressed generally by reptiles and birds. It was long sus 

 pected that such impressions were of organic origin ; but geologists hesitated to admit 

 this opinion till the evidence was complete, preferring to consider them as the effects of 

 disintegration or aqueous action, by which the softer parts of a rock are worn away before 

 the harder yield. We may notice such impressions under two general divisions. 



Ichnolites, foot-prints on stone. In the year 1828, Dr. Duncan gave an account, with 

 drawings, to the Royal Society of Edinburgh, of the tracks of an animal on new red 

 sandstone, in the quarry of Corn Cockle Muir, in Dumfriesshire. The tracks were found 

 there in great abundance, on many successive layers of stone, to the depth of forty-five 

 feet, or as low as the quarry had been opened. After removing a large slab which 



presented foot-prints, perhaps the very next 

 stratum, at the distance of a few feet or inches, 

 exhibited the same phenomenon. Hence the pro 

 cess by which the impressions were made on the 

 sand, and subsequently buried, must have been re 

 peated at successive 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 remarkable fossil footsteps in the new red 

 sandstone at Hesseburg, near Hildberghausen in 

 Saxony. The largest track appears to have been 

 made by an animal whose hind foot was eight 

 inches long. It has received, from Professor Kaup, 

 the name of Chirotherium, founded on the re 

 semblance of its impressions to the shape of the 

 human hand ; but some of the tracks appear to 

 Foot-print and Rain-drops. j iave been ma( j e by tortoises, and M. Link suggests, 



that others are to be referred to gigantic batrachians, or frogs and salamanders. The 

 annexed cut shows a few tracks of the Chirotherium on a sandstone slab from Hesseburg. 



In the summer of 1838, a va 

 riety of tracks, referred to the 

 Chirotherium, tortoises, and 

 saurian reptiles, were disco 

 vered in the new red sand 

 stone at the quarries of Store- 

 ton Hill, in the neighbourhood 

 of Liverpool. The largest 

 foot-print was nine inches 



Tracks of the Chirotherium. long, and six inches broad, 



the length of the step approaching to two feet. Professor Hitchcock notices twenty- 

 seven species of tracks, occurring in fifteen quarries, along the banks of the Connecticut 

 river, some of which he called Sauroidichnites, from their resemblance to the tracks of 

 saurians ; and Mr. Scrope found abundant foot-prints, along with ripple-marks, on layers 

 of the forest marble, to the north of Bath. These are conjectured to have been made by 

 Crustacea, crawling along the bottom of an estuary, for between the rows of the foot-marks 

 the impression of the stomach, or the trail of the tail, is sometimes visible. 



Ornithichnites, stony bird tracks. A communication made to the American Journal 



