bustards belong, with the ostriches and cassowaries, and which is
characterized by possessing but three toes on each foot (one species of
ostrich has but two), or, if a fourth toe be present, so imperfectly is
it developed in most of the cases, that it fails to reach the ground.
And in almost all the footprints of the primeval birds of the
Connecticut there are only three toes exhibited. Peculiar, ill
understood laws regulate the phalangal divisions of the various animals.
It is a law of the human kind, for instance, that the thumb should
consist of but three phalanges; while the fingers, even the smallest,
consist of four. And, in the same way, it is a law generally exemplified
among birds, that of the three toes which correspond to the fingers, the
inner toe should be composed of three phalanges, the middle or largest
toe of four phalanges, and the outer toe, though but second in point of
size, of five phalanges. Such is the law now, and such was equally the
law, as shown by the American footprints, in the times of the Lias. Some
of the impressions are of singular distinctness. Every claw and phalange
has left its mark in the stone; while the trifid termination of the
tarso-metatarsal bone leaves three marks more,--fifteen in all,--the
true ornithic number. In some of the specimens even the pressure of a
metatarsal brush, still possessed by some birds, is distinctly
traceable; nay, there are instances in which the impress of the dermoid
papillae has remained as sharply as if made in wax. But the immense size
of some of these footprints served to militate for a time against belief
in their ornithic origin. The impressions that are but secondary in
point of size greatly exceed those of the hugest birds which now exist;
while those of the largest class equal the prints of the bulkier
quadrupeds. There are tridactyle footprints in the red sandstones of
Connecticut that measure eighteen inches in length from the heel to the
middle claw, nearly thirteen inches in breadth from the outer to the
inner toe, and which indicate, from their distance apart in the straight
line, a stride of about six feet in the creature that impressed them in
these ancient sands,--measurements that might well startle zoologists
who had derived their experience of the ornithic class from existing
birds exclusively. Comparatively recent discoveries have, however, if
not lessened, at least familiarized us to the wonder. In a deposit of
New Zealand that