223 FOSSIL FOOT-PRINTS IN COAL STRATA. [CHAP. XXXVII. 



This ambition of the people of the west to possess Oregon, is 

 at least no new idea, for I happened to purchase at Louisville an 

 old guide-book, describing the Falls of the Ohio and the city, in 

 which, when speaking of commercial matters, the colonization 

 and annexation of Oregon was set forth as the means of &quot;opening 

 a direct trade with China.&quot; I observed to one of the citizens, 

 that it was satisfactory to see that none of the upper, or even 

 of the middle classes, were taking any part at Greensburg in this 

 agitation. He shook his head, and said, &quot; Very true ; but these 

 meetings are most mischievous, for you must bear in mind, that 

 your nobody in England is our everybody in America.&quot; 



I had determined to visit Greensburg, on my way from Pitts- 

 burg to Philadelphia, that I might examine into the evidence of 

 the reality of certain fossil foot-prints of a reptile said to have 

 been found in strata of the ancient coal-formation, and of which 

 Dr. King, of Greensburg, had published an account in 1844. 

 The genuineness of these foot-marks was a point on which many 

 doubts were still entertained, both in Europe and America, and 

 I had been requested by several geological friends not to return 

 without having made up my mind on a fact which, if confirmed, 

 was of the highest theoretical importance. Up to this period, 

 no unequivocal proofs had been detected of the fossil remains of 

 vertebrated animals more highly organized than fishes, in strata 

 of such antiquity as the carboniferous rocks, and the absence of 

 air-breathing quadrupeds or birds, served to constitute negative 

 evidence, of peculiar significance, in reference to the coal-meas 

 ures, because, as before stated, 1 * they contained the monuments 

 of shallow fresh-water swamps, and often of surfaces of land 

 covered with a luxuriant vegetation of terrestrial plants, some of 

 the buried trees of which still remain with their roots in their 

 natural position. That we should never have found, in such 

 deposits, the remains of air-breathing creatures, except a few 

 insects, that we should not yet have met with a single mammifer 

 or bird, or lizard, snake, or tortoise, or the faintest indication of 

 their existence, seemed most inexplicable, and led many geolo 

 gists to embrace the opinion, that no beings having a higher 

 * See ante, p. 185. 



