Human Foot-Prints in Solid Limestone. 17 



and in consequence of this high estimate of its value, there were 

 many of the citizens strongly disposed to prevent the slab being 

 sent away from the city. 



" I know of no rock along that margin, of a soft and plastic 

 nature, that seemed to be in a process of consolidation ; but the 

 opinion was well grounded there at that time, that the imprint of 

 the two human feet had been made on the rock when it was soft 

 alluvium mud. 



"I never saw or heard of any imprint of human feet along 

 there or any where else, save on this rock; but I recollect of re- 

 marking in many of the steps of the smooth rock along near to 

 the same place from which this slab had been taken out, the nu- 

 merous imprints of turkey, deer, and buffalo feet.* I often looked 

 to find human imprinted feet, but was unsuccessful." 



These extracts fully explain the circumstances under which 

 the slab was originally obtained by Mr. Rapp. When that gen- 

 tleman, in the year 1824, sold the New Harmony estate to my 

 father, the slab also came into my father's hands, and ultimately 

 into the possession of the late Mr. William Maclure. After his 

 decease, it was presented to me by his executors, and is now pre- 

 served in my museum of objects of natural history at New Har- 

 mony. 



The slab itself is a ponderous mass of solid limestone, weigh- 

 ing upwards of a ton. Although fossils had been observed in 

 the vicinity of its original location, yet until lately no remains 

 had been discovered on the specimen itself. In preparing to re- 

 move it, however, from Mr. Maclure's residence to my laboratory, 

 observing a horizontal fissure which extended entirely across the 

 rock, I split off by the aid of wedges a continuous layer, some 

 two or three inches thick, from its inferior surface. This opera- 

 tion, besides materially facilitating its transportation, disclosed, as 

 I had hoped it would, some familiar fossil shells ; and I subse- 

 quently discovered a good many more by reducing the detached 



* Those unacquainted with the science of geology, frequently mistake for fossil 

 foot-prints, what are in fact moulds of shells, or merely casual appearances. On 

 the table-mounds in Iowa, a rock contains numerous impressions of a species of 

 PerUamerus, which, when partially weather-worn, so closely resembles the print 

 of a cloven foot as to be continually mistaken for it by the uninitiated. Hitchcock, 

 misled by a report regarding fossil footsteps, undertook a journey of several hun- 

 dred miles — to find nothing but accidental markings on the rock. 



Vol. xLiii, No. 1.— April-June, 1842, 3 



