2l6 
LIFE OF DEAN BUCKLAND. 
[CH. VIII. 
of men and beasts whose progress spread desolation over 
the earth. But the Reptiles that crawled upon the half- 
finished surface of our infant planet, have left memorials 
of their passage, 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, 
between the time in which these footsteps were impressed 
by Tortoises upon the sands of their native Scotland, and 
the hour when they were 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 passing 
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.” 1 
The variety and number of these impressions have created 
a new science, and Ichnology has taken a definite place as 
a branch of palaeontological research. It may be added that 
the slabs bearing the footprints to which he alludes in the 
Treatise had been used to form a garden wall, from whence 
four of them were taken, full of beautiful impressions of the 
feet of these animals, with a cast of the nails as perfect as 
if they had been taken in wax. Dr. Buckland was in the 
quarry himself, and assisted one of the workmen to raise a 
slab on which were these prints, which had never seen the 
sun since the time they were first made. It was while 
he was writing the Bridgewater that a slab of sandstone 
with these footmarks had been sent him to decipher. He 
was greatly puzzled ; but at last, one night, or rather 
between two and three in the morning, when, according to 
Bridgewater, vol. i., chap. xiv. 
