628 



REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1904. 



assuming' the existence of highly organized birds at so early a period, 

 particularly when there were known to be large reptiles which might 

 make tracks very similar, went on to speak of the then recently 

 described Dinornis" of New Zealand, and wrote as follows: 



It seems most reasonable, therefore, to conclude that the ornithichnites are the 

 impressions of feet of birds which had the same low grade of organization as the 

 Apteryx and Dinornis of New Zealand, and this Jatter may be regarded as the last 

 remnants of an apterous race of birds which seems to have flourished in the epoch 

 of the New Red sandstone of Connecticut and Massachusetts. 



The concluding paragraph in the article from which these abstracts 

 have been made is interesting as showing the unqualified acceptation 

 by Murchison of the opinions by the various authorities. Thus, he is 

 quoted as having said: 



From this moment, then, I am prepared to admit the value of the reasoning of 

 Doctor Hitchcock and of the original discoverer, Dr. James Deane, who, it appears 

 by the clear and modest paper laid before us (by Doctor Mantell), was the first per- 

 son to call the attention of the professor to the phe- 

 nomenon, expressing then his own belief, from what 

 he saw in existing nature, that the footprints were 

 made by birds. Let us now hope, therefore, that 

 the last vestiges of doubt may be removed by the 

 discovery of the bones of some fossil Dinornis. In 

 the meantime let us honor the great moral courage of 

 Professor Hitchcock in throwing down his opinions 

 before an incredulous public. 



About this time Doctor Deane, evidently 

 becoming dissatisfied with the position he 

 was likely to occupy in the discussion, be- 

 gan to himself publish descriptions, his first 

 paper appearing in the American Journal 

 of Science, XL VI, 1844, where he figured 

 a slab some 6 by 8 feet in dimensions con- 

 taining over 75 impressions. He did not, however, attempt any scien- 

 tific description of the same, and referred to them as Ornithichnites 

 fylicoides, of Hitchcock. 



In a paper read before the American Association of Geologists and 

 Naturalists at Washington in May, 1844, Doctor Hitchcock took the 

 subject up once more and gave a brief history of the discovery of foot- 

 prints in other countries, and also certain data regarding an earlier 

 discovery than that of Doctor Deane, referring to the fact that in 1802 

 Mr. Pliny Moody, of South Hadley, in Massachusetts, had turned up 

 with the plow upon his father's farm in that place a stone containing 

 in relief five tracks of what he, Hitchcock, now referred to as Ornith- 



" Bones of the Dinornis, the giant bird of New Zealand, it should be mentioned, 

 first came to the notice of the scientific world through the publications of Richard 

 Owen, the English anatomist, in 1839-184.!. 



Fig. 122.— James Deane. 



