204 
ON AN EEllONEOUS STATEMENT OF THE OCCURRENCE 
OF NATURAL HUMAN FOOTPRINTS IN THE PALEOZOIC 
EOCKS. 
2h the Editor of the Geologist. 
Mt deak Sie, 
Tn 1822* Mr. Schoolcraft figured and described a block of lime- 
stone, bearing two prints of human feet, from the western bank of 
the Mississippi at St. Louis, and wrote regarding them thus : " These 
impressions were made at a time when the rock was soft enough to 
receive them by pressure, and the marks of the feet are natural and 
genuine." He added, however, that Col. Eenton considered them to 
have been " the result of human labour," and probably belonging to 
the same period as that when the mounds in the neighbourhood of St. 
Louis were raised. I may add, from Dr. D. D. Owen's statement, that 
Messrs. Maclure, Say, Troost, and Lesueur agreed as to the artificial 
origin of the prints. 
The late Dr. Mantell introduced into some editions of his " Wonders 
of Geology " an account of these footprints ; illustrating them with a 
woodcut, — accepting the hypothesis of their having been naturally pro- 
duced, — and erroneously terming the rock " sandstone." 
In 1842f Dr. David Dale Owen, having obtained possession of this 
slab of stone, and being desirous of explaining its true character, care- 
fully examined it, and found that it contained fossils of the moimtain- 
liraestone age, and that " the impressions in question are not fossils, 
but an intaglio, of artificial origin." Dr. Owen also freely, and with 
justice, criticised Dr. Mantell's remarks on the specimen; and he referred 
to Leonhard's cautious notice of the same slab. 
In the sixth edition of the " Wonders," J in 1848, Dr. Mantell in- 
timated that he no longer used these sculptured footprints as evidence 
of the early existence of man on the earth, since Dr. D. D. Owen had 
proved them to be artificial. 
In a little book entitled " Voices from the Eocks, "lately published, I 
have seen, to my surprise, a woodcut of these footprints, which, copied 
from the suppressed illustration once used by Dr. Mantell, is unscrupu- 
lously brought forward as an established evidence of the geological 
antiquity of man. 
Now, Mr. Editor, what is to be thought of any one, writing on 
geology at the i)resent day, and pretending to settle a philosophical 
question by reference to facts, who produces as geological evidence a 
well-known misconception, which had actually been ignored by the 
very author frum one of the older editions of whose work this second- 
hand writer, without the least examination or research, borrows it as 
the basis for his chief argument in supi)ort of the untenable hypothesis 
of the existence of man in the palaeozoic period ? 
For my part, being interested in the scientific reputation of my late 
friend, Dr. Mantell, and in that of his works, some of which I have had 
* American Journal of Science, vol. v., p. 223, &c. 
f American Journal of Science, vol. xliii., p. 14, &c. 
X Vol.ii., p. 90, note. 
