Human Foot-Prints in Solid Li mestone. 29 



If, as Mantell seems to have imagined, the intagho were in 

 sandstone, the difficuhy in supposing it a f(3ssil would be lessen- 

 ed. The tracks of marsupialia, birds, anc'l reptiles hitherto dis- 

 covered, occur, I believe, uniformly in that; species of rock.* 



Of the materials which compose sandstone we have daily ex- 

 amples in a state capable of receiving an in:ipression, and it is well 

 known that, by the infiltration of calcareous matter, beds of sand 

 may, in a comparatively short period of time, be consolidated. 

 There is, therefore, not the same difficulty to encounter, in ex- 

 plaining the occurrence of foot-marks in sandstone as in pure 

 calcareous matter, which, although it frejquently encrusts, is sel- 

 dom seen on dry land in a plastic state. 



But all these previous arguments are weak, compared with that 

 based on the origin, position and age of the rock under consider- 

 ation, and on the fact, that no human remains of any description 

 have ever been discovered in any similar formation.f 



We have ascertained, that the organic remains talcen from the 

 slab itself are marine shells. We find, moreover, that it is overlaid 

 by other beds of limestone containing fossils, also the former 

 inhabitants of an ancient ocean. The inference is inevitable, 

 that these various beds were deposited at the bottom of the sea. 

 But unless we imagine the stratum containing the foot-marks to 

 have been raised from the bed of the ocean, while still in a plastic 

 state, to have received the impress of the human foot, and to have 

 been again submerged, (the tracks remaining unefTaced until 

 gradually covered by other beds of limestone,) how can we even 

 conjecture that these prints were impressed on the nascent rock ? 



No remains of man or his works, have ever yet been found, 

 except in the most recent deposits. Yet the limestone composing 

 our slab is of immense antiquity ; anterior, even, to the coal for- 

 mation. Between this ancient limestone and the recent one of 

 Guadaloupe, as well as all other rocks in which have been de- 

 tected any traces of man or his handicraft, there intervene six 



* The only tracks ever discovered in solid limestone are, I believe, of Crusta- 

 cea, and therefore of marine origin. 



t The human fossil bones found in Guadaloupe are no exception; for they were 

 discovered in a species of limestone now in process of jormation. This modern 

 rock is composed of" consolidated sand and recent shells;" the shells of the same 

 species now existing in the adjacent seas; and bears no analogy whatever to the 

 ancient solid limestone here treated of. 



