292 Prof. Hitchcock on IchnoUthology, or Fossil Footmarks. 



Art. YII. — Report on Ichnolithology, or Fossil Footmarks, with 

 a Description of several New Species, and the Coprolites of 

 Birds, from the valley of Connecticut River, and of a suppo- 

 sed Footmark from the valley of Hudson River ; by Prof. 

 Edward Hitchcock, LL. D. of Amherst College. 



(Read before the Association of American Geologists and Naturalists, at Washing- 

 ton, May 11, 1844.) 



Ichnolithology, or as it is denominated by Dr. Buckland, Ich- 

 nology, has only recently been admitted as a branch of paleon- 

 tology. It was a great advance upon our previous knowledge, 

 when Cuvier demonstrated experimentally, " that when we find 

 merely the extremity of a well preserved bone, we are able, by a 

 careful examination, assisted by analogy and exact comparison, 

 to determine the species to which it once belonged, as certainly 

 as if we had the entire animal before us." But if this principle 

 was, and still is, doubted by some able men, still more sceptical 

 should we expect them to be, and still more sceptical they have 

 actually been, as to the position that we are able to determine the 

 character of an animal from its footmark. Yet this is the funda- 

 mental principle of ichnolithology. Even here however, we 

 find that so far as one tribe of animals are concerned, the saga- 

 cious mind of Cuvier has anticipated this principle. " Any one," 

 says he, " who observes merely the print of a cloven hoof, may 

 conclude that it has been left by a ruminant animal, and regard 

 this conclusion as equally certain with any other in physics or 

 morals. Consequently this single footmark clearly indicates to 

 the observer the form of the teeth, of the jaws, of the vertebrae, 

 of all the leg bones, thighs, shoulders, and of the trunk of the 

 body of the animal which left the mark. It is much surer than 

 all the marks of Zadig." It required only to extend this principle 

 to other tribes of animals, to constitute ichnolithology in its pre- 

 sent state. Whether it can be confided in as implicitly in regard 

 to other animals as in regard to the ruminants, is questionable. 

 Nor is it probable that Cuvier, when he wrote the above, had any 

 idea that tracks would ever be found in solid rock sufficiently per- 

 fect to indicate the animal that made them ; much less without 

 any other evidence of their existence. The difficulty of con- 

 ceiving how tracks could be petrified, has indeed been with most 



