﻿500 rOOTPEINTS IN THE EXETEE SAI^DSTONES. [Nov. 1908, 



of the hand or sole of the foot, and the fact that the feet were 

 not brought into the median line in the act of walking. They 

 suggest rather a primitive form of short-bodied animal, which was 

 beginning to rely upon three toes of the hind limb to do most of 

 the work of locomotion. 



The rock is a red sandstone which hardens on exposure, two 

 tests giving 1*81 and 1'93 tons per inch as the crushing strength. 

 It is mainly composed of grains of quartz, some of which are 

 very perfectly rounded. An analysis communicated to me by 

 Messrs. CoUard & Sons shows 72*27 per cent, of silica, 8*62 per cent, 

 of lime, 4-94 per cent, of magnesia, and 12 per cent, of carbon- 

 dioxide and moisture. 



The surfaces are sometimes slightly ripple-marked, and the large 

 slab which carries E is traversed by a series of dark curving lines, 

 which look like lines of fine dark dust washed up as the water 

 gently overflowed a thin stratum of wind-blown dust by which the 

 footprints had been covered and fixed. 



As work proceeds the quarry will be carefully watched, and if 

 the stone meets with a sufiicient demand to justify extensive 

 operations, there is every reason to hope that numerous traces of 

 animal-life may be procured. 



The lessees are fully alive to the scientific interest of such 

 remains, and have given every facility, for which I must express 

 my thanks to them, as well as for presenting all the specimens to 

 our local Museum. 



EXPLANATION OF PLATE LI. 



This represents about two-thirds of the entire slab E. The light should 

 come from the top of the page. The ' length of stride ' is the distance between 

 two successive prints of the same foot. 



Discussion. 



The President welcomed this addition to our knowledge of the 

 Red Rocks of Devon, and trusted that the identification of the fossil 

 footprints might assist in the correlation of the deposits in which 

 they occurred. 



Mr. Whitaker suggested that there seemed to be a general con- 

 sensus of opinion, that the beds among which these footprints 

 occurred were possibly of Permian age. 



The Author replied that the beds in which the prints occurred 

 were considerably below the Budleigh-Salterton Bed, being separated 

 therefrom by some hundreds of feet of sands and marls. He had 

 not referred to Hitchcock's work on the Connecticut footprints, 

 having been so far unable to make anything like a thorough search 

 for records of similar remains. He believed that the chief reason 

 for assigning the beds to Permian time was the fact of their close 

 relation to the Exeter lavas, and a reluctance to suppose that 

 volcanic activity persisted into the Trias. In conclusion, he 

 thanked the Fellows for their reception of the paper. 



