NATURAL HISTORY OF THE PRIMEVAL WORLD. 



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It was evident from their form that they were much 

 too short for the feet of crocodiles, or any other known 

 Saurians; and that they more probably belonged to 

 some species of the Testudinata, or Tortoises. But the 

 head, pelvis, and scapula of the animal being afterwards 

 found, it was pronounced to be a huge air-brealhing 

 reptile closely connected with the Batrachians, an order 

 now represented among us by frogs, toads, and water- 

 newts. In Japan, however, a gigantic species still 

 exists, called the Sieboldtia; but if a giant compared 

 with the croaking inhabitants of our English marshes, 

 it was a dwarf contrasted with the new red sandstone 

 monster. 



Judging from the impressions of its hand-like feet, 

 Dr. Kaup, one of their early discoverers, considered it 

 to be a marsupial animal, and named it Cheirotlierium; 

 but its Batrachian affinities have been determined by 

 Professor Owen, who, in allusion to the complex struc- 

 ture of its teeth, christened it the Labyrinthodtm. These 

 teeth were situated both on the proper jaw-bones, and 

 on the bone of the roof of the mouth called " vomer." 

 The head was not naked, but defended by a bony 

 cushion, and attached to the neck-bones by two joints. 

 Its two fore feet were larger than its hind feet; the 

 former seem to have been twelve inches long, the latter 

 eight inches long by five inches wide. There were five 

 toes, of which the first or great toe was bent inwards 

 like a thumb. Each toe was armed with a nail. Its 

 hind legs were much longer than its fore legs, in which 

 respect it resembled the Batrachians ; but its head and 

 teeth were more like those of a shark. Altogether it 

 was an uncouth-looking animal, but must have been 

 singularly agile in its movements, capable of astounding 

 leaps, and endowed with peculiar voracity. 



The historian or the antiquary, says Dr. Buckland, 

 commenting on these strange footprints on the sands 

 of time, may have traversed the fields of ancient or of 

 modern battles ; and may have pursued the line of march 

 of triumphant conquerors, whose armies trampled down 

 the most mighty kingdoms of the world. The winds 

 and storms have utterly effaced the fugitive impressions 

 of their devastating course. Not a trace remains of a 

 single foot, or a single hoof, of all the countless millions 

 of men and beasts whose "storm-march," resistless and 

 unresting, spread desolation over the earth. But the 

 reptiles that crawled upon the half-finished surface of 

 our infant planet, while its plastic substances were still 

 being moulded into shape and form by the divine hand, 

 have left on record the eternal and indelible memo- 

 rials of their existence. No pen of poet or historian 

 has told of their creation or destruction ; their very 

 bones are found no more, or only partially and rarely 

 found, among the fossil treasures of the primeval earth. 

 Thousands of years have passed away, and the world 

 has undergone convulsion after convulsion, since the 

 remote age when these footprints were first engraven on 

 the yielding sand; yet there they are now, distinct and 

 clear, exposed to our curious and wondering eyes, and 

 stimulating our minds to dwell upon the wonders of an 

 almost forgotten past. There they are now, stamped 

 upon the rock, as legible as the recent track of man or 

 animal in newly-fallen snow ; there they remain, as if 

 in proof that thousands of years are but as a link in the 



grand chain of eternity: as if in mockery of the tran- 

 sitory character of the heroes and heroic achievements 

 of mankind. 



Ichnites. The consideration of these fossil foot- 

 prints, or Ichnites, has become a distinct section of 

 Palaeontology, to which the name of Ichnology has been 

 given. Our knowledge of many extinct animals wholly 

 depends on the more or less distinct traces of their pas- 

 sage which have been discovered on the rocks which 

 once formed the plastic sands or mud of the sea-shore 

 or the river side. They are not numerous, however, 

 in sandstone ; most generally they occur in rocks origin- 

 ally deposited as mud, or in argillaceous beds lying 

 between an upper and under sandstone layer. We 

 may suppose, therefore, that anciently the bed of mud 

 or clay formed an extensive level shore, exposed by the 

 receding tide. Across this shore passed the primeval 

 animals, and their footprints were immediately baked 

 and hardened by the influence of a tropical sun. When 

 the waters again came up, they would deposit a thin 

 layer of sediment, which would be augmented by every 

 successive flow of the tide, until the footprints were 

 securely protected from any accident whatever. It is 

 clear that this process would be most effectual in locali- 

 ties only submerged at spring- tides ; and in this very 

 manner, as Sir Charles Lyell tells us, the impressions 

 of numerous wading-birds are preserved, at the present 

 day, in the plastic mud which covers the flat shore of 

 the Bay of Fundy, where the tide sometimes rises sixty 

 and seventy feet. 



Another method of preserving the impressions would 

 be independent of the solar influence, as where, on an 

 ordinary muddy shore, during the ebb of the tide, the 

 footprints were filled up with blown sand, and the 

 waters, on their return, overspreading the level, deposited 

 upon it a fresh stratum of silt. 



In one or other of these fashions, certain animals of 

 the primeval world have been enabled to transmit to us 

 these curious memorials of their existence ; and we can 

 trace the sinuous wriggling progress of various species 

 of Annelids, the crawling movements of huge Crustacea, 

 the slow heavy track of immense Chekmians, the jerking 

 motions of vast Labyrinthodonts, besides the various 

 processions and retrocessions of other reptiles and ani- 

 mals, engaged in their daily task of purification and 

 destruction. Who can contemplate without emotions 

 of awe, wonder, and admiration, this vivid testimony 

 of the rocks to the plenitude of Creative Power ? Who 

 can read these records of the ages without a sense of 

 divine grandeur as compared with human impotence? 

 The footprints endure in the muds and sands of a half- 

 finished world, when Tadmor is a howling waste, and 

 of all the mighty civilization of ancient Egypt only a 

 few shattered pillars and ruined temples remain ! 



The Dromatherium. The earliest terrestrial Mam- 

 malia as yet discovered are of the marsupial order; 

 small pouched animals allied to the existing opossum. 

 It was generally considered that these did not make 

 their appearance on- our globe until the Oolitic period ; 

 but American geologists believe that they have found 

 the fossil remains of a species, to which they have given 

 the name of Dromatherium sikestre, in the new red 

 sandstones of North America. 



