412 Concerning Foot-Prints. (July, 
those shown in Figure 77 have been discovered at Beauharnois and 
at other localities in Canada; to all of these the generic name of 
Protichnites (earliest foot-prints) has been given. These trails 
differ among themselves, however, principally in regard to the 
number of individual tracks in the successive series of impres- 
sions. Some of the trails have seven separate indentations in each 
corresponding series, and are hence designated as Protichnites sep- 
tem-notatus ; others with eight impressions in each group, making 
sixteen as formed by all of the feet of the animal at the same 
time, are known as P. octo-notatus ; others have received the 
name of P. multi-notatus. When we remember the great an- 
tiquity of these foot-prints, their discovery is seen to be of pecul- 
iar interest. The Potsdam sandstone on which they were im- 
pressed forms the base of the Silurian system in this country, 
and is almost the oldest formation in which well-defined fossils 
have been found. If we attempt to enumerate the centuries 
that have passed away since these delicate foot-prints were 
traced upon the sandy shore of the old Silurian ocean, we find 
ourselves as totally bewildered by the almost infinite lapse of 
time as we are when we endeavor to comprehend the distance of 
the fixed stars in space. 
Splendid specimens of Protichnites can be seen at Montreal, 
in the rooms of the Geological Survey of Canada, to whose 
former director, Sir William Logan, we owe our knowledge of 
these interesting fossils. No one can examine those slabs of sand- 
stone, with the strange trails sweeping across them, without some 
of that feeling of mingled wonder and awe which creeps over us 
when we see the inscriptions of some ancient people regarding 
whom tradition is silent. : y : 
These trails are not only interesting from their great antiquity, 
but also because they afford the only records ever discovere 
of the animals that made them. We find in the rocks that 
have afforded these foot-prints a few fossil sea-weeds, which 
mark the humble commencement of the flora of the globe, the 
shells of the Lingula, which are quite abundant at some localities 
and are the most common fossils from this formation, and also P 
few shells of other brachiopods, and some equally rare specimens 
of gasteropod shells. These lowly forms of life, together with a 
_ few species of trilobites, some of which, however, reached a very 
large size, make up the scanty fauna of those early days. None 
of the animals in this brief list could have left trails on the sand 
_ at all similar to those known as Protichnites, which owe their 1m- 
