Prof. Hitchcock on Ichnolithology, or Fossil Footmarks. 311 



was their resemblance to the tracks of living birds, that every one 

 not familiar with geology, who had ever seen their tracks upon 

 snow, or mud, at once pronounced the fossil footmarks to have 

 had the same origin. A careful examination, both of the fossil 

 and living footmarks, forced me to the conclusion that the first 

 and most obvious impression regarding them was sustained by fair 

 scientific analogies. But there were tv/o objections to these views, 

 that yet remained unanswered; and which prevented several of 

 the ablest geologists and comparative anatomists of Europe from 

 falling in v/ith them. The first was, that the tracks were too large 

 to have been made by a bird. The second was, that animals of 

 so high an organization as birds could not have existed so early 

 as the new red sandstone period. The discovery of the Dinornis, 

 and examination of the anatomical structure of the Apteryx, and 

 other struthious birds of southeastern Asia, have unexpectedly 

 removed both these difficulties. In regard to them, says Prof. 

 Owen, '• the metatarsal bone of the Dinornis Novcb Zealandim 

 is fully large enough to have sustained three toes, equivalent to 

 produce impressions of the size of those of the Ornithichnites 

 giganteus of Prof Hitchcock. It seems most reasonable there- 

 fore, to conclude that the Orriithichnites are the impressions of 

 the feet of birds, which had the same low grade of organization 

 as the Apteryx and Dinornis of New Zealand, and these latter 

 may be regarded as the last remnants of an apterous race of birds, 

 which seems to have flourished at the epoch of the nevj red sand- 

 stone of Connecticut and Massachusetts."* To all this we can 

 now add the evidence of the coprolites; and I see not what more 

 is wanting, except the bones, to complete the argument. Nor am 

 I by any means certain but that we already have these, — the pro- 

 perty of Prof Silliman, and figured in my Final Report. It would 

 not be strange, if these fragments should pass under the eye of 

 Richard Owen, — the man on whom so deservedly the mantle of 

 Cuvier rests, and who was able to construct the Dinornis from a 

 single fragment of the shaft of a bone. — I say, it would not be 

 strange, if out of these fragments he should be able to place be- 

 fore us some Dinornis of sandstone days.f 



* American Journal of Science, Vol. xlv, p. 186. 

 ■ t July, 1844— In the Lond. Ed. and Dub. Phil. Magazine for May of this year, 

 we have an abstract of Prof. Owen's last paper on the Dinornis, read before the 

 Zoological Society of London last November, founded on a second box of bones 



