ROOM I. ORXITHICHNITES. 73 



a test, in addition to the other evidence before mentioned, 

 should, I think, remove all scepticism in regard to the 

 ornithic nature of most of these bipeds. The size indeed 

 of some of the fossil impressions seemed at first to raise 

 an objection against their having belonged to birds, as it 

 far exceeded that of any living Ostrich ; but the Dinornis 

 and other feathered giants of New Zealand have removed this 

 difficulty. 



" The footprints are accompanied by numerous coprolites, 

 and Mr. Dana has derived an ingenious argument from the 

 analysis of these bodies, the proportion they contain of uric 

 acid, phosphate of lime, carbonate of lime, and organic mat- 

 ter, showing that, like guano, they are the droppings of birds 

 rather than of reptiles. 1 Still it is asked, whether, if birds 

 were so abundant, we ought not to meet with some of their 

 bones in a fossil state, a remark, be it observed, which is 

 equally applicable to the associated quadrupedal imprints. 

 In reference to this question, I took pains, when on the shores 

 of the Bay of Fundy, after I had examined the red sand- 

 stone of the Connecticut, to inquire whether, in digging 

 trenches through the red mud of recent origin, from which 

 the tide has been excluded by sea-banks, they had ever found 

 the bones of birds, and I could hear of no instance, although I 

 saw the sandpiper, or Tringa minuta, making every day those 

 lines of impressions in the mud bordering the estuary which 

 I have described and figured in my ' Travels.' 2 My friend 

 Dr. Webster, of Kentville, Nova Scotia, has recently sent me 

 some fine examples of rain-drops, which he saw formed during 

 a shower on this modern mud, and casts of which project in 

 relief from the under-side of an incumbent layer of the same 

 argillaceous deposit, thrown down during a subsequent rise of 

 the tides. Thus marked and traversed by cracks caused by 

 shrinkage, and containing the footprints of birds, they pre- 

 sent a perfect counterpart of many of the old triassic shales 

 above described.*** 



1 " Amer. Journ. of Science," vol. xlviii. p. 46. 



2 Sir Charles Lyell has presented specimens of the foot-tracks of 

 these birds on the sandy shores of the Bay of Fundy to the British 

 Museum, for comparison with the fossils. 



8 Sir C. Lyell's Anniversary Address, pp. 44, 45. 



