FOSSIL FOOTSTEPS. 263 
battles ; and may have pursued the line of 
march of triumphant Conquerors, whose armies 
trampled down the most mighty kingdoms of 
the world. The winds and storms have utterly 
obliterated the ephemeral impressions of their 
course. Not a track remains of a single foot, 
or a single hoof, of all the countless millions 
of men and beasts whose progress spread de- 
solation over the earth. But the Reptiles, that 
crawled upon the half-finished surface of our 
mfant planet, have left memorials of their pas- 
sage, enduring and indelible. No history has 
recorded their creation or destruction ; their 
very bones are found no more among the 
fossil relics of a former world. Centuries, and 
thousands of years, may have rolled away, be- 
tween the time in which these footsteps were 
impressed by Tortoises upon the sands of their 
native Scotland, and the hour when they are 
again laid bare, and exposed to our curious and 
admiring eyes. Yet we behold them, stamped 
upon the rock, distinct as the track of the pass- 
ing animal upon the recent snow ; as if to show 
that thousands of years are but as nothing 
amidst Eternity — and, as it were, in mockery 
of the fleeting perishable course of the mightiest 
Potentates among mankind.* 
* A similar discovery of fossil footsteps has recently been 
made in Saxony, at the village of Hessberg, near Hildburg- 
hausen, in several quarries of grey quartzose sandstone, alter- 
