Pe Eee oe eee 
E.. Hitchcock on Fossil Footmarks of the Connecticut Valley. 58 
have three distinct phases. The largest species left a heart-sha 
indentation, which was repeated every few inches. Would not 
such impressions be just what we might expect if this animal 
had such a short ees tail as the Archeopteryx? And does it 
not suggest one of the uses of such a tail, viz: to furnish the 
animal with a sort of third hind-foot to help sustain it while it 
might use ~ fore-feet perhaps for seizing upon objects above 
aud aroun 
The tail of the Anomepus intermedius, although rarely leaving 
an impression, did sometimes dra along and 
continuous trail. This would indicate greater length and perhaps 
tenuity. But how much of attenuation and elongation might be 
consistent with an ornithic type we have no means of knowing. 
Prof. Dana speaks of a posterior elongation of the body as “con- 
nected profoundly with inferiority of grade in the different types 
of animal life,” and says, that “it is the very one of all abnor- 
mal features to be looked for in the early birds 
Upon the whole the singular markings of the tail upon stone, 
with the exception perhaps of A. intermedius, do really suggest 
a curious coincidence between the the caudal. extremity of this 
ee _ that of the Archeopteryx. 
s I had reached this point in my conclusions, a renee 
Han ete awaited me. In examining some new specimens, a 
singular trail showed itself eg one which I had never elias 
noticed; or if I had seen it, I had not connected it with the 
tracks, but considered it among those inexplicable markings due 
perhaps to water and wind, which so frequently puzzle the stu- 
dent of ichnology. But in this case there is a series of some six 
or seven rather flat and broad grooves, each one or two tenths of 
an inch wide, and the whole forming a trail more than an inch 
wide, running across the entire specimen, ssing over one very 
distinct three-toed narrow-toed track, which is half an inch deep, 
and the grooves show themselves on opposite sides of the wih 
mark, certainly two thirds of its depth, 
appearing as if som 
flipper-like appendage had dragged behind the aconas ae 
of easily conforming itself to the irregularities of the surface, 
__ The fact, that the marks follow the depression of the track, shows 
that they were made subsequent to the track, and suggests at 
once the idea of a broad and singular tail. What a pity it is 
that there is only one track upon the specimen: but so far as I 
ean judge, the trail runs in the direction in which the ciareal 
was movin 
In these conclusions I should have acquiesced with considera. 
ble confidence, had I not found, on examining our new specimens, 
as well as others in the cabinet, that we had quite a number with 
similar markings, and that the trails in these do not always 
follow the line of tracks, but are sometimes on one side of it and 
