30 Human Foot-Prints in Solid Limestone. 



great geological formations ; the coal measures ; the new red 

 sandstone ; the lias and oolite : the chalk ; the tertiary, and the 

 diluvium. These dcsposits form a geological series commonly 

 three or four thousand feet in thickness, and embrace six vast 

 and strongly marked epochs, during each of which, distinct races 

 of animals have successively arisen, existed, and become extinct. 

 The time necessary to these changes we can hardly conceive, 

 much less calculate. Add the supposition usually entertained by 

 geologists (based on the gigantic and ultra-tropical vegetable 

 growth necessary to produce the superincumbent beds of coal) 

 that the temperature of the globe and its atmosphere during the 

 deposition of these secondary formations, was unfit for animals 

 with lungs ; and the idea of a human fossil existing in ancient 

 limestone must appear at variance with the best ascertained facts 

 which the industry of the modern geologist has supplied to us, 

 and with the most legitimate inferences to be deduced therefrom. 

 Nothing less than some fossil phenomenon of a character so un- 

 equivocal that its origin admits of but one explanation, ought, 

 under these manifold difficulties and improbabilities, to win our 

 confidence or command our belief. 



True, that the attempt to account for the artificial origin of 

 these impressions is not without its difficulties. Yet of difficul- 

 ties, as of evils, let us choose the least. It appears to me much 

 less improbable that some aboriginal artist should have exhibited 

 unlooked-for skill in intagliating a rock, than that man should 

 have been coeval with the Crustacea. 



The argument deduced from the excellence of the workman- 

 ship would be more difficult of reply, did these impressions rep- 

 resent almost any part of the human body other than the foot. 

 What simpler or better outline to guide the inexperienced hand 

 of a native workman, than the mark which is left on a smooth 

 and dry rock by a moistened foot. With such an outline as his 

 first guide, and with the constant opportunity of testing the ac- 

 curacy of the progressive work, by applying to it the naked foot, 

 there is surely no insuperable difficulty in supposing an aboriginal 

 sculptor, (imbued perhaps, with that inborn love and taste for his 

 art, which we are not justified in attributing exclusively to the 

 Caucasian variety of the human race,) to have succeeded, even 

 with such rude tools as an Indian could command, in producing 

 a natural and faithful representation. 



