EARLY CETACEOUS FOSSILS. 



245 



we are in circumstances to say that waders and runners 

 were the first created birds. Mr. Lyell, who stands as high 

 as this or any other writer on geology, says, with regard to 

 those very ornithichnites, as they are called — " This sand- 

 stone is of much higher antiquity than any formation 

 in which fossil bones or any other indications of birds 

 have been detected in Europe. Still we have no ground 

 for inferring from such facts that the feathered tribe 

 made its first appearance in the western hemisphere 

 at this period. It is too common a fallacy to fix the era of 

 the first creation of each tribe of plants or animals, and 

 even of animate beings in general, at the precise point 

 where our present retrospective knowledge happens to stop."* 

 What now gives force to this observation is, the recent dis- 

 covery of a new set of bird foot-prints — said to be of waders 

 only — in the carboniferous formation of Pennsylvania. 

 The emergence of such a fact in the midst of the review- 

 er's speculations on the foot-prints of the New Red Sand- 

 stone, forms a most emphatic commentary on all decisive 

 inferences where the facts are obviously casual and isola- 

 ted. 



Of a somewhat different character are the reviewer's 

 remarks on the first relics of mammalia — the few bones 

 of cetacea from the Lower Oolite and of marsupials from 

 the Stonesfield Slate. Here the very first mammal family 

 is undoubtedly marine; and, if it were to receive equal 

 consideration with the grallatorial foot-prints, he ought 

 certainly to admit that it fayors the development theory. 

 But he escapes from this claim by a mode of his own. 

 He has not seen these relics ! The American foot-prints 

 were good evidence, without being seen ; but a fact 

 which makes against his theory requires personal in- 

 spection, even though it may come forward with the 

 authority of Baron Cuvier.f He is more at ease with 

 the marsupials, which are of course unequivocally land 

 animals. I have only here to refer to the fourth edition 

 of my book — published two months before the appear- 

 ance of the review, and while I was unrecking of any 

 great objection being grounded on this point — where it is 



* Travels in Noith America, i., 255. 



f " There is in the Oxford Museum an ulna from the Great 

 Oolite of Enstone, near Woodstock, Oxton, which was examined 

 by Cuvier and pronounced to be cetaceous; and also a portion of a 

 very large rib, apparently of a whale, from the same locality."— 

 Backland's Eridgew iter Treatise, i., 115, not*. 



