326 PALAEONTOLOGY. 



It was a startling announcement, and a conclusion that 

 must have had strong evidence to support it, since one of the 

 kinds of the tracks had been made by a pair of feet, each 

 leaving a print 20 inches in length. Under the term Omi- 

 thichniles giganteus, however, Dr. Hitchcock did not shrink 

 from proclaiming his conviction of the existence, during the 

 period of tiie deposition of the red sandstones of the valley of 

 the Connecticut, of a bird which must have been at least four 

 times larger than the ostrich .* The impressions succeeded each 

 other at regular intervals ; they were of two kinds, but differ- 

 ing only as do a right and left foot ; and they alternated with 

 each other, the left foot being a little to the left, and the right 

 foot a little to the right, of the mid-line between a series of 

 tracks. Each footprint (fig. Ill, & and r) exhibits three toes, 

 diverging as they extend forwards. The distance between the 

 tips of the inside and outside toes of the same foot was 12 

 inches. Each toe was terminated by a short strong claw pro- 

 jecting from the mid toe a little on the inner side of its axis, 

 from the other two toes a little on the outer side of theirs. The 

 end of the metatarsal bone to which those toes were articulated 

 rested on a two-lobed cushion which sloped upwards behind. 

 The inner toe (r) shewed distinctly two phalangeal divisions, 

 the middle toe three, the outer toe (&) four. And since, in 

 living birds, the penultimate and ungual phalanges usually 

 leave only a single impression, the inference was just, that 

 the toes of this large foot had been characterized by the same 

 progressively-increasing number of phalanges, from the inner 

 to the outer one, as in birds. And, as in birds also, the toe 

 with the greatest number of joints was not the longest ; it 

 measured, e.g., I2i inches, the middle toe from the same base- 

 line measured 16 inches, the outer toe 12 inches. Some of 

 the impressions of this huge tridactylous footstep were so well 

 preserved as to demonstrate the papillose and striated character 



* American Journal of Science for 1836, vol. xxix., pi. i. 



