ERA OF THE NEW RED SANDSTONE. 



55 



flaily visits to the sea. Some slabs similarly impressed, 

 in the Stourton quarries in Cheshire, are further marked 

 with a shower of rain which we know must have fallen 

 afterwards, for its little hollows are impressed in the 

 footmarks also, though more slightly than on the rest ol 

 the surface, the comparative hardness of a trodden place 

 having apparently prevented so deep an impression being 

 made. At Hessburg in Saxony, the vestiges of four dis- 

 tinct animals have been traced, one of them a web-footed 

 animal of small size, considered as a congener of the cro- 

 codile ; another, whose footsteps having a resemblance to 

 an impression of a swelled human hand, has caused it to 

 be named the cheir other ium. The footsteps of the cheiro- 

 therium have been found also in the Stourton quarries 

 above mentioned. Professor Owen, who stands at the 

 head of comparative anatomy in the present day, has ex- 

 pressed his belief that this last animal was the same ba- 

 trachian of which he has found fragments in the new red 

 sandstone of Warwickshire. At Runcorn, near Manches- 

 ter, and elsewhere, have been discovered the tracks of an 

 animal which Mr. Owen calls the rynchosaurus, uniting 

 with the body of a reptile the beak and feet of a bird, and 

 which clearly had been a link between these two classes 

 If geologists shall ultimately give their approbation to 

 the inferences made from a recent discovery in America, 

 we shall have the addition of perfect birds, though pro- 

 bably of a low type, to the animal forms of this era. It is 

 stated to be in the quarries of this rock, in the valley of 

 Connecticut, that foot-prints have been found, apparently 

 • produced by birds of the order grallap., or waders. " The 

 footsteps appear in regular succession on the continuous 

 track of an animal, in the act of walking or running;, with 

 the right and left foot always in their relative places. 

 The distance of the intervals between each footstep on 

 the same track is occasionally varied, but to no greater 

 amount than may be explained by the* bird having al- 

 tered its pace. Many tracks of different individuals and 

 different species are often found crossing each other, and 

 crowded, like impressions of feet upon the shores of a 

 muddy stream, where ducks and geese resort."* Some 

 of these prints indicate small animals, but others denote 

 birds of what would now be an unusually large size. One 



* Dr. Bucklnnd, quoting an article by Professor Hitchcock, in 

 the American Journal of Science and Arts, 1836 



