LONDON BIRDS 33 



who left their footmarks in the secondary rocks, fought 

 with great lizards and flying dragons, ages before a 

 single mammal had appeared upon the earth. Among 

 the birds of which there are very early traces are 

 some of the Heron tribe, which must have been of 

 enormous size. There are three-toed footprints in 

 the red sandstone of the Connecticut l which are said 

 to 'measure eighteen inches in length and nearly 

 thirteen in breadth, and to indicate, by their distance 

 apart in a straight line, a stride of six feet.' 



' They tell,' says Hugh Miller, ' of a time far removed 

 into the by-past eternity, when great birds frequented 

 by myriads the shores of a nameless lake, to wade in 

 the shallows in quest of its mail-covered fishes of the 

 ancient type, or long extinct molluscs, while reptiles, 

 equally gigantic, and of still stranger proportions, 

 haunted the neighbouring swamps; and when the 

 same sun that shone on the tall moving forms beside 

 the waters, and threw their long shadows across the 

 red sands, lighted up the glades of deep forests, all of 

 whose fantastic productions tree, bush, and herb 

 have, even in their very species, long since passed 

 away.' There is no place in which the birds might 

 be supposed to feel the change of times more than here. 

 The Thames-side in old days must have been a paradise 

 for long-legged birds; and even chaos itself and the 

 modern world could be scarcely more unlike than the 



1 The celebrated Connecticut ' Moulds ' are now believed ' to have 

 been made by certain extinct, in many respects, bird-like reptiles.' 

 The Elements of Ornithology . Mivart. 



C 



