name of
_Cheirotherium_ was proposed for the unknown extinct animal which had
produced these marks. The dimensions in the several examples were
various; but 'in all cases the prints of what appear to have been the
hind-feet are considerably larger than those of the fore-feet; so much
so, indeed, that in one well-preserved slab containing several
impressions, the former measures eight inches by five, and the latter
not more than four inches by three. In this specimen, the print of the
fore-foot is not more than an inch and a half in advance of that of
the hinder one, although the distance between the two successive
positions of the same foot, or the length of a pace of the animal, is
fourteen inches. It therefore appears, that the animal must have had
its posterior extremities both much larger and much longer than the
anterior; but this peculiarity it possessed in common with many
existing species, such as the frog, the kangaroo, &c.; and beyond this
and certain appearances in the sandstone, as if a tail had been
dragged behind the animal, in some sets of footsteps, but not in
others, there is nothing to suggest to the comparative anatomist any
idea of even the class of Vertebrata to which the animal should be
referred.'[5] Soon after, some teeth and fragments of bones were
discovered, by which Professor Owen was able to indicate an animal of
the frog-family (Batrachia), but with certain affinities to the
saurian order (crocodiles, &c.), and which must have been about the
size of a large pig. It has been pretty generally concluded, that this
colossal frog was the animal which impressed the hand-like
foot-prints.

At a later period, footprints of birds were discovered upon the
surfaces of a thin-bedded sandstone belonging to the New Red formation
on the banks of the Connecticut River, in North America. The birds,
according to Sir Charles Lyell, must have been of various sizes; some
as small as the sand-piper, and others as large as the ostrich, the
width of the stride being in proportion to the size of the foot. There
is one set, in which the foot is nineteen inches long, and the stride
between four and five feet, indicating a bird nearly twice the size of
the African ostrich. So great a magnitude was at first a cause of
incredulity; but the subsequent discovery of the bones of the Moa or
Dinornis of New Zealand, proved that, at a much later time, there had
been feathered bipeds of even larger bulk, and the credibility o