- 
of Fossil Footmarks. 283 
which supplied him with subsistence. Throughout the period 
of the entire deposition of the new red sandstone, his gig: 
traces abound ; while other varieties, although powerful, seem 
to have been successively annihilated. LEA 
On the other extreme, there are footprints not one inch in 
length, with a stride of three or four inches, and between 
these limits there is an easy grade, in point of dimensions. 
Many have the fourth toe projecting backward, like the 
heron, with sometimes a claw standing out at right angles, or 
nearly so, from it. Some few have an immense projection of 
the heel backward, larger indeed than the foot itself. ‘There 
is a slab in this place; forming the ceiling of a vault, contain- 
ing two consecutive impressions of enormous size, stride four 
feet, with three immense toes,’ and an appendage pointing 
directly backward nearly half a yard in length, and several 
inches in breadth. The diversity is truly astonishing, and, 
view the subject in any of its aspects, we turn from the con- 
templation in astonishment. As a family or order these birds 
Were doubtless waders, having left their traces upon the mud- 
dy shores and shallow bottoms of the ancient waters. They 
are therefore intimately related to the existing Order Gralle. 
I have never seen but a single species that appears to be 
palmated, or at most semipalmated. ; 
These birds existed over a country of great extent, from 
the northern terminus of the sandstone basin in Gill, Massa- 
chusetts, into Connecticut, where they disappear; but indica- 
tions of them have been discovered in New Jersey, and indeed 
in Pennsylvania, in a rock of still greater age. ‘They occur 
"pon both banks of the Connecticut, but invariably upon the 
eastern declivity of the Trap formation, upon which the sand- 
stone inclines, and the evolution of the igneous might not 
only have been the elevating agent of the sandstone rock, but 
also of its conversion: into solid rock. "Phe irruption of the 
'Sneous rock occurred upon the upper verge of the stratified 
Portion of the sandstone formation, where it was alternately 
