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carrion-eating birds and beasts and to tbe attacks of insects, but 
were also subjected to tbe most powerful means of decomposition 
and decay — atmospheric influences. Moreover, tbe traces of 
former terrestrial surfaces bave been very seldom preserved, 
and tbe instances that do occur are restricted in area and very 
rare indeed. 
Tbe first evidence tbat we bave of birds, is in tbe Red Sand- 
stone of Connecticut, formerly considered of Triassic but now 
believed to be of Oobtic age. Amongst tbe bird-prints of tbis 
rock, and they belong to many species of very different sizes, 
are some of gigantic dimensions, belonging, apparently, as we 
bave said, to struthious birds. Wherever tbe rock is exten- 
sively quarried these large footprints are sure to be seen, and 
they are found throughout the whole thickness of tbe beds, 
amounting to many thousand feet. Tbe ordinary stride of tbe 
bird was about three feet, and tbe length of tbe impress of its 
foot nine inches. There are, however, other footprints in tbis 
rock still more gigantic, measuring up to eighteen inches, belong- 
ing to birds tbat bad a stride of five feet at every step they 
took. But although birds from these evidences have been 
known to have existed during the period of the Connecticut 
sandstone, since 1835, when Dr. Deane communicated his dis- 
coveries to his scientific friends, up to this hour only a few 
indeterminable bones have been met with. 
In 1857 Dr. Emmons made known, under the name of 
Palceornis struthionoides , a portion of the sacrum of a bird 
containing six vertebras anchylosed together, from the red and 
variegated sandstones of Anson County, North Carolina. The 
description of these ornithic remains is included by Dr. Emmons 
in his notice of the palaeontology of the American Trias ; but 
the nature of this relic and the possibility of its belonging to a 
large and heavy struthious bird would incline us to question 
its right to be referred to that age, until the actual period of 
the Connecticut sandstones, and the relationship of these red 
sandstones of Anson to them, is completely established. 
The next evidence of the ancient existence of birds occurs 
possibly in the Wealden beds of the South-east of England. 
From time to time the late Dr. Mantell had obtained some 
fragments of delicate bones from the strata of Tilgate Forest, 
which he conceived to have ornithic characters, but the accuracy 
of this view was put in doubt when the so-called bird-bones 
from the Stonesfield slate were proved to have belonged to 
pterodactyles. Some further specimens, however, were obtained 
and submitted by Dr. Mantell to Cuvier and to Owen. 
Strengthened with the confirmation of such eminent authorities, 
the Doctor announced positively before the Geological Society 
in 1835 the existence of bird-remains in the Wealden forma- 
