Ichnology. 525 



rain drops on different parts of the same footstep has varied with the 

 unequal amount of pressure on the clay and sand, by the salient 

 cushions and retiring hollows of the creature's foot; and from the 

 constancy of this phenomenon upon an entire series of footmarks 

 in a long continuous track, we know that this rain fell after the 

 animal had passed. The equable size of the casts of large drops 

 that cover the entire surface of ihe slab, except in the parts im- 

 pressed by the cushions of the feet, record the falling of a shower of 

 heavy drops on the day in which this huge animal had marched 

 along the ancient strand; hemispherical impressions of small drops, 

 upon another stratum, show it to have been exposed to only a 

 sprinkling of gentle rain that fell at a moment of calm. 



In one small slab of New Red Sandstone found by Dr. Ward near 

 Shrewsbury, we have a combination of proofs as to meteoric, hydro- 

 static, and locomotive phenomena, which occurred at a time incal- 

 culably remote, in the atmosphere, the water, and the movements of 

 animals, and from which we infer with the certainty of cumulative cir- 

 cumstantial evidence, the direction of the wind, the depth and course 

 of the water, and the quarter towards which the animals were 

 passing ; the latter is indicated by the direction of the footsteps which 

 form their tracks ; the size and curvatures of the ripple-marks on 

 the sand, now converted to sandstone, show the depth and direction 

 of the current ; the oblique impressions of the rain drops register 

 the point from which the wind was blowing, at or about the time 

 when the animals were passing. 



Demonstrations founded solely upon this kind of circumstantial 

 evidence were duly appreciated, and are well exemplified, by the 

 acute author of the story of Zadig ; who from marks he had noticed 

 on the sand, of its long ears, and teats, and tail, and from irregular im- 

 pressions of the feet, declared the size and sex, recent parturition and 

 lameness of a bitch he had never seen ; and who from the sweeping of 

 the sand, and marks of horse-shoe nails, and a streak of silver on a 

 pebble that lay at the bottom of a single footstep, and of gold upon 

 a rock against which the animal had struck its bridle, inferred that 

 a horse, of whose existence he had no other evidence, had recently 

 passed along the shore, having a long switch tail, and shod with 

 silver, with one nail wanting upon one shoe, and having a bridle 

 studded with gold of twenty carats value. 



In addition to the commencement of Mr. Bowerbank's publication 

 on the Fossil Fruits and Seeds of the London Clay, before alluded 

 to, we have hailed with satisfaction the announcement, by Professor 

 Henslow and Mr. Hutton, of their intended continuation of the 

 Fossil Flora of Great Britain, conducted for some years by Dr. 

 Lindley and Mr. Hutton, and lately suspended. 



A Dictionary of the terms and language of geology has long been 

 a desideratum to young students, to whose early progress the tech- 

 nical terms of the science have hitherto presented formidable im- 

 pediments. This want has been recently supplied by two publica- 

 tions of this kind, one by Mr. George Roberts, author of the History 

 of Lyme Regis ; the other by Dr. Humble.^ 



