2o0 A. B. C. Sehvyn — Discovery of Reptilian Footprints. 



With regard to the bead-like bodies, I may mention first of all a 

 fact which has come under my own observation. A chalybeate 

 spring emptied itself into a small stream which ran over a clayey 

 bed into the marshes of North Kent. Many water weeds grew 

 along this stream, striking their roots deep into the clay. Around 

 these roots the iron formed concretions in the clay, especially when 

 they were decomposing, and, when the root had perished, these con- 

 cretions had the form of irregular cylindrical masses with a hole 

 down the middle. Some pf the perforated cylindrical bodies of the 

 Crag may have had mutatis mutandis a similar origin. Again, 

 sponges and other organisms are very apt to grow round stems of 

 any kind, and when fossilized these would often preserve the cast 

 only of the body around which they grew. A similar question has 

 been raised before with regard to some remarkable forms derived 

 originally from the Chalk, which are known to have been picked up 

 and used as beads in later times.^ 



To sum up. Those who would bring these perforated fossils for- 

 ward as evidence of the existence of man in the Crag period must 

 show — not only that they are like some objects known to have been 

 the result of human agency — but also that Nature could not or was 

 not at all likely to have produced similar forms. 



On the contrary, however, it would appear that most of them are 

 unlike human work, and that some of them were and all may have 

 been produced by well-known natural agents. 



IV. — On the Discoveky of Eeptilian Footprints in Nova 



SOOTIA. 



By Alfred R. C. Selwyn, F.G.S., 



Director of the Geological Survey of Canada. 



THE very fine series of fossil footprints which, at my request. 

 Principal Dawson has kindly examined and described in the 

 accompanying note, were discovered last summer, in Nova Scotia, 

 under the following circumstances. 



Mr. Scott Barlow, of the Canadian Geological Survey, was at the 

 time engaged in geological explorations in the district of Spring Hill, 

 Cumberland County, where he met Mr. Albert J. Hill, C.E., in 

 charge of works at the bridge over Eiver Philip, on Section viii. of 

 the Intercolonial Eailroad, and he informed Mr. Barlow that he had 

 in his possession a slab of sandstone showing small footprints, which 

 he wished to present to the Greological Museum in Montreal. Sub- 

 sequently, on the 1st September, he informed Mr. Barlow that slabs 

 with large and numerous footprints had been found, and were at the 

 bridge. At the same time Mr. Hill informed Mr. Sandford Fleming, 

 the chief engineer, of this highly interesting discovery, who at once 

 took steps to have all the slabs with footprints preserved, and 

 directed that they should be given to Mr. Barlow, for transmission 

 to the Museum of the Geological Survey. 



1 James Wyatt and Rupert Jones, Geologist, Yol. v., 1862, pp. 233, 236. See 

 Lyell, Antiquity of Man, p. 119. 



