372 
ELEMENTS OF GEOLOGY. 
conforraability upon an eroded surface of the “ Bunter ” next 
to be described. 
Lower Trias or Bunter. — The lower division or English 
representative of the ‘‘Bunter” attains a thickness of 1500 
feet in the counties last mentioned, according to Professor 
Ramsay. Besides red and green shales and red sandstones, 
it comprises much soft white quartzose sandstone, in which 
the trunks of silicified trees have been met with at Allesley 
Hill, near Coventry. Several of them were a foot and a half 
in diameter, and some yards in length, decidedly of conifer¬ 
ous wood, and showing rings of annual growth.* Impres¬ 
sions, also, of the footsteps of animals have been detected 
in Lancashire and Cheshire in this formation. Some of the 
most •remarkable occur a few miles from Liverpool, in the 
whitish quartzose sandstone of Storton Hill, on the west side 
of the Mersey. They bear a close resemblance to tracks 
first observed in this member of the Upper New Red Sand¬ 
stone, at the village of Plesseberg, near Hildburghausen, in 
Saxony. For many years these foot¬ 
prints have been referred to a large un¬ 
known quadruped, provisionally named 
Cheirotherium by Professor Kaup, be¬ 
cause the marks both of the fore and 
hind feet resembled impressions made 
by a human hand. (See Fig. 394.) The 
foot-marks at Hesseberg are partly con¬ 
cave, and partly in relief, the former, or 
the depressions, are seen upon the up¬ 
per surface of the sandstone slabs, but 
® in relief are only upon the lower 
Saxony. One-eighth of surfaces, being, in fact, natural casts, 
natural size. n. t i \ r a. * 4 . 
formed m the subjacent loot-prmts as 
in moulds. The larger impressions, which seem to be those 
of the hind foot, are generally eight inches in length, and five 
in width, and one was twelve inches long. Near each large 
Fig. 394. 
Fig. 395. 
Line of footsteps on slab of sandstone, Hildburghausen, in Saxony. 
footstep, and at a regular distance (about an inch and a half) 
before it, a smaller print of a fore foot, four inches long and 
three inches wide, occurs. The footsteps follow each other 
* Buckland, Proc. Geol. Soc., vol. ii., p. 439; and Murchison and Strick¬ 
land, Geol. Trans., Second Ser., vol. v., p. 347. 
