Prof. Hitchcock on Ichnoliihology^ or Fossil Footmarks. 293 



minds the grand objection to their existence. And yet, almost 

 any brick kihi will furnish examples of the perfect preservation 

 of footmarks, rain drops and other impressions made upon the 

 clay in a plastic state, and which has been subsequently indurated 

 by heat. 



The earliest trustworthy description with which I am acquaint- 

 ed of fossil footmarks, was given by Rev. Dr. Duncan in the 

 eleventh volume of the Transactions of the Royal Society of 

 Edinburgh for 1828. They occur on the new red sandstone of 

 Dumfriesshire, in Scotland, and were made by tortoises. They 

 are figured by Dr. Duncan, and also by Dr. Buckland in his 

 Bridgewater Treatise. 



In 1831 Mr. G. P. Scrope found numerous small footmarks on 

 the layers of the forest marble north of Bath in England. They 

 are figured in the Journal of the Royal Institution of London for 

 1831, as well as in Dr. Bnckland's Bridgewater Treatise. They 

 exhibit traces not merely of the claws of the animal, but of his 

 tail or stomach. 



In 1834 an account was published of tracks upon the new red 

 sandstone of Saxony, near Hildberghausen. The largest tracks 

 were those of an unknown animal, to which the provisional name 

 of Chirotherium was given, from the resemblance of its track to 

 the human hand. The fore foot in some specimens, was eight 

 inches long and five wide, and the hind foot four inches long and 

 three inches wide. They were supposed by Dr. Hohnbaum and 

 Prof. Kaup, who first described them, to have been made by a 

 marsupial animal. But the investigations of Mr. Owen on the 

 gigantic Batrachians of the new red sandstone, render it extreme- 

 ly probable, although not certain, that the Chirotherian tracks 

 were produced by animals of this description. Of one genus of 

 this tribe, the bones of the head, pelvis and scapula have been 

 discovered, and the animal called Labyrinthodon by Mr. Owen, 

 must have been at least as large as an ox. He must have been 

 larger to have made some of the tracks on the Saxon rock, and 

 especially those nine inches long and six inches wide, upon the 

 rocks of England, more recently discovered.* M. Link had early 

 suggested that some of the German tracks were made by gigantic 



* Specimens of these impressions in the rock are now in the cabinet of Yale 

 College, and also in that of Amherst College. 

 Vol. XLVii, No. 2.— July-Sept. 1844. 38 



