18 TRANSACTIONS LIVERPOOL BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



of our birds, and certainly there are many points of 

 resemblance between them and the Ratitse ; but I believe 

 the general opinion now is that they were not in the direct 

 line of descent. 



Professor Miall, in his report on the Labyrintho- 

 dontia,* suggests that our Cheirotherium footprints are 

 more Dinosaurian than Labyrinthodout, and it may be 

 useful to us if we go into this question. I may at once 

 admit we have nothing in our Sandstones that we can say 

 is certainly a Dinosaurian footprint. A point that has 

 occurred to me is that the Storeton footprints are more 

 digitigrade than we have hitherto imagined, though the 

 foot was occasionally put down so that the whole length of 

 the metatarsals came in contact with the ground ; at 

 least, I think this was the case with the well-known print 

 called Cheirotherium herculis (Plate I., Fig. 1). 



The digitigrade character is shown well in a slab 

 in the Owens College Museum, believed to have come from 

 Storeton (Plate II., Fig. 1). The Dinosaurs of the 

 Wealden had 3 functional toes and have left us their foot- 

 prints, but with the Triassic forms we are not well 

 acquainted, and caution is requisite in working on 

 Professor Miall's hint. 



The dolomitic conglomerate of Durdham Down, 

 Clifton, in which were found the remains of two genera of 

 Dinosauria, the Palseosaurus and the Thecodontosaurus, is 

 also exposed along the northern shore of the Bristol 

 Channel, and near Newton Nottage, Glamorganshire, Mr. 

 Sollas has noticed and described fa series of three-toed 

 footprints : the toes are divergent and the footprint as a 

 whole is entirely different from our Storeton prints. It 

 will be noticed, however, that the individual digits are 



* Brit. Assoc. Reports, 1873. 

 f Quart. Jour. Geol. Soc, vol. xxxv., p. 511. 



