338 / Ornithichnology. 



not exceed twenty genera, and fifty species ; yet I have found at 

 least seven tracks, (and were I to express my own convictions, I 

 should say ten,) so distinct that they must have been made by dif- 

 ferent species, if not genera, and that too, in three or four quarries, 

 that have been opened only a few rods square. I exceedingly 

 doubt, whether any three spots of that size can now be found in the 

 valley of the Connecticut, where the tracks of a greater number of 

 the existing species of birds occur on the mud. Shall we then say, 

 that the birds of the new red sandstone era were as numerous as 

 they now are ? Perhaps it would be unsafe, from such premises, to 

 draw such an inference ; yet, if any birds existed then, why may 

 they not have been even mor6 numerous, in a climate so favorable 

 to their development, than at present? 



I have met with only one account of any thing similar to what I 

 have now described, and that is the statement of the Rev. Mr. 

 Duncan, respecting the foot marks of a quadruped upon the new 

 red sandstone of Dumfries-shire, in Scotland, ascertained with much 

 probability to be those of a tortoise. Judging from his account, and 

 the accompanying lithographic plate, in the eleventh volume of the 

 Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh,* I should infer 

 that these impressions will not compare in distinctness, with those in 

 the valley of the Connecticut. It is interesting, however, to learn, 

 that tracks made on new red sandstone, on both sides of the Atlan- 

 tic, have been preserved to the present day.f 



I am aware that the presumption derived from geological analo- 

 gies, is decidedly opposed to the facts and inferences, which I have 

 presented in this memoir ; for it goes to prove the existence of 

 birds, nearest in the perfection of their structure to the Mammalia, 

 among the very earliest of vertebral animals ; a few saurians and fish- 

 es only having been discovered, as low as the new red sandstone. J 

 Hence I expect that geologists, as they ought, will receive these 

 statements and conclusions, not without hesitation and strong sus- 



* For the loan of M'hich I am indebted to the kindness of Dr. N. Bowditch. 



t In a catalogue of scientific work^ that have been published within a few 

 months past, in Europe, lately brought within my reach, I find one. by Jabez Al- 

 lies, printed in London, "on certain curious indentations in the old red sandstone 

 of Worcestershire and Herefordshire, considered as the tracks of antediluvian 

 animals, &c." but I know nothing more of these impressions, besides the title of 

 this work. 



1: Tracks of marmpial or quadrumanial animals have been recently discovered 

 in new red sandstone, in Germany. See our miscellanies. — Ed. 



