220 REPORT— 1903. 



served in the footprints of vertebrates and the tracks of invertebrates 

 found in different horizons over extended areas wherever the conditions 

 were favourable to their preservation. 



The small prospects of satisfactory results, the certainty of the expendi- 

 ture of much labour and time, and the necessity for the exercise of so 

 much patience have caused the systematic study of this particular branch 

 of palaeontology to receive less attention than it deserves. 



The paper of Dr. Duncan in 1828,^ the great work of Sir W. Jardine 

 on the Ichnology of Annandale, and the numerous papers by Huxley,''* 

 Owen, Egerton, Black, Mantell, Cunningham, Harkness, A. S. Woodward, 

 and others, scattered througii the transactions of various societies, are 

 mainly concerned with describing prints found in the special localities to 

 •which the papers relate, and not to the review of the subject as a whole. 

 Dr. T. C. Winkler,^ in the archives of the Musee Teyler, brought together 

 abstracts of the most important papers that had appeared up to that time, 

 and gave a description of the examples in the museum of that institution ; 

 but he did not attempt to correlate the results. 



The footprints in the Trias in England, and probably also in Scotland, 

 are with some doubtful exceptions confined to the Keuper.** 



Whether this indicates any great difference in the mode of deposition 

 and prevailing conditions or not, the fact remains that from the base of 

 the Lower Keuper to well up in the Upper Keuper footprints are met with 

 at intervals whenever there are beds suitable for their formation and pre- 

 servation. 



The tracks of vertebrates are associated with those of invertebrates, 

 probably representing Vermes, Mollusca, and Crustacea, or at any rate 

 resembling the tracks made by recent members of these classes. 



On looking through collections of Triassic footprints it will be seen 

 that the greater number has been obtained in this country from Storeton, 

 Runcorn, Weston, and Lymm, all in Cheshire, or in other places in the 

 same series of exposures of the basement beds of the Keuper and those 

 beds immediately overlying them. They have also been recorded from 

 beds occupying a similar horizon at Grimsill in Shropshire, and 

 in Staffordshire, both north and south, particularly from quarries a few 

 miles north-west of Wolverhampton and from the neighbourhood of 

 Warwick. They have also been noticed in the St. Bees Sandstone near 

 Appleby. In Scotland the counties of Elgin and Dumfries are classical 

 localities, and a little search would probably prove their presence in most 

 districts where the bed of the upper division of the Trias are quarried. 



The earliest finds of footprints in this country seem to have been those 

 at Corncockle Muir in Dumfriesshire in 1824, and at Tarporley in Cheshire, 



' ' An Account of the Tracks and Footprints of Animals found impressed on Sand- 

 stone in the Quan-y of Corncockle Muir in Dumfriesshire,' by the Rev. Henry Duncan, 

 D.D., Minister of Ruth well, Trans. Roy. Soc. Edin., vol. xi. 1828. Read January 7, 

 1828. 



- Memoirs of the Geological Survey, Monograph III., by T. H. Huxley, on 

 ' Crocodilian Remains from the Elgin tjandstone, with Remarks on the Ichnites of 

 ('ummingstone.' 



- ' Etude Ichnologique sur les Empreintes de Pas des Animaux Fossiles,' Archwet 

 Miiaie Teyler, Harlem, second series, vol. ii., part 4, 188C. 



* Tliere are in Owens College Museum, Manchester, two slabs with footprints, 

 said to have come from the Bunter Pebble Beds, near Eastham, Cheshire, and given 

 by Sir J. Leader Williams. As a quantity of stone for use in the construction of the 

 Manchester Ship Canal was obtained from the Runcorn and Weston Quarries there 

 is a possibility of error as to the original source of the specimens. 



