396 Prof. Hitchcock^s Rejoinder to Dr. Deane. 



if on a subject so novel, where one has to grope his way without 

 any assistance from the labors or opinio7is of his predecessors, 

 some modifications of early opinions should not be necessary as 

 new facts are brought to light." 



Dr. Deane thinks it strange that I should have been so tardy 

 in awarding justice to those who preceded him in the discovery 

 of these tracks ; and he speaks of them (Dr. Dwight, an aged 

 and respectable physician ; Mr. Moody, a farmer, but a man of 

 public education ; and Mr. Wilson, an ingenious mechanic) as 

 not having " the slightest comprehension of the origin or char- 

 acter" of the tracks. I did not, indeed, think it necessary to 

 name them till some of them intimated to me that they ought to 

 have been mentioned. But one important object is hereby ac- 

 complished. However incompetent they are, they certainly dis- 

 covered these tracks earlier than Dr. Deane, and came to the 

 same conclusion as he did, as to their being bird tracks, and for 

 similar reasons ; and I might name fifty others, who, upon look- 

 ing at my specimens, have expressed the same views at once ; 

 so that it does not require scientific investigation to reach this 

 conclusion. But it does demand it to establish the conclusion ; 

 and this is what I claim to have done independently. 



Dr. Deane also manifests great sensibility because I quoted 

 his first letter to show what he terms his " incompetency." Let 

 him understand that I charge him with no intellectual incom- 

 petency to investigate this subject. On the contrary, I have a 

 high opinion of his ability for such a work. But I do maintain, 

 that at the time he discovered the tracks, he did not understand 

 the subject in its connection with geology, simply because he 

 had not studied it. And my proof is, his first letter. If, as a 

 geologist, he had examined the subject before I took it in hand, 

 and given his opinion as the result of his investigations, I could 

 have no apology for omitting to notice that opinion. I was com- 

 pelled therefore to publish that letter, or he under the imputa- 

 tion of having acted dishonorably. In his letter to Dr. Mantell, 

 read before the London Geological Society, he stated that when 

 he first found the tracks he was "aware that footsteps of ani- 

 mals upon rocks were unknown, or at least controverted occur- 

 rences," (I impute the discrepancy between this statement and 

 his acknowledged ignorance of the subject in his first letter to 

 me, to a slip of memory,) and that the scepticism of Professor 



