ROOM I. ORNITHICHNITES. 71 



But although the weight of evidence is in favour of 

 the ornithic character of these footsteps on the sands of 

 Time, the idea of such a development of the highly organ- 

 ized class Aves, during the Triassic epoch, is so utterly at 

 variance with what is known as to the existence of warm- 

 blooded, air-breathing vertebrata on the lands of the second- 

 ary formations, that until bones of birds are discovered in 

 strata of the same age, we would repeat the salutary caution 

 of an eminent palaeontologist : " Footprints alone, like 

 those termed Ornithichnites, are insufficient to support the 

 inference of the progression of the highly developed organ- 

 ization of birds of flight, by the creatures that have left 

 them. The Rhynchosaurs, and the biped Pterodactyles, 

 already warn us how nearly the ornithic type may be ap- 

 proached without the essential characters of the Saurian 

 being lost; and by the Cheirotherian ichnolites we learn how 

 closely an animal, in all probability a batrachian, may re- 

 semble a pedimanous mammal in the form of its foot- 

 prints." ' 



Notwithstanding, therefore, the presumptive proofs lately 

 obtained of the ornithic origin of the footsteps on the 

 Connecticut sandstones, I do not think we are warranted 

 in concluding, in the absence of all vestiges of the skeletons 

 of the animals, that the countries of the Triassic epoch 

 rivalled the islands of New Zealand, in the abundance, va- 

 riety, and magnitude of that highly organized class, of which 

 no certain relics are known in formations of a much later 

 period. 



SIR C. LTELL ON ORNITHICHNITES. I will conclude this 

 notice of a subject involving questions of such deep interest, 

 with the following extract from the admirable address of the 

 late President of the Geological Society, which embodies the 

 most recent observations and opinions of that eminent phi- 

 losopher on the phenomena in question. 



" When I first examined these strata of shale and sand- 

 stone near Jersey city, in company with Mr. Eedfield, I saw 

 at once from the ripple-marked surface of the slabs, from the 

 casts of cracks, the marks of rain-drops, and the imbedded 

 fragments of drift-wood, that these beds had been formed 

 precisely under circumstances most favourable for the recep- 



1 " Brit, Assoc. Report on Fossil Reptiles," 1841, p. 203. 



