f the
_Ornithichnites Giganteus_ has accordingly been established. Sir
Charles Lyell, when he visited the scene of the footprints on the
Connecticut River, saw a slab marked with a row of the footsteps of
the huge bird pointed to under this term, being nine in number,
turning alternately right and left, and separated from each other by a
space of about five feet. 'At one spot, there was a space several
yards square, where the entire surface of the shale was irregular and
jagged, owing to the number of the footsteps, not one of which could
be distinctly traced, as when a flock of sheep have passed over a
muddy road; but on withdrawing from this area, the confusion gradually
ceased, and the tracks became more and more distinct.'[6] Professor
Hitchcock had, up to that time, observed footprints of thirty species
of birds on these surfaces. The formation, it may be remarked, is one
considerably earlier than any in which fossil bones or other
indications of birds have been detected in Europe.

In the coal-field of Westmoreland county, Pennsylvania, there were
discovered in 1844, slabs marked with footprints bearing a
considerable resemblance to those of the Cheirotherium, and believed
to have been impressed by an animal of the same family, though with
some important points of distinction. The hind-feet are not so much
larger than the fore; and the two on each side, instead of coming
nearly into one row, as in the European Cheirotherium, stand widely
apart. The impressions look such as would be made by a rudely-shaped
human hand, with short fingers held much apart; there is some
appearance as if the fingers had had nails; and a protuberance like
the rudiment of a sixth finger appears at the side. This was the
first indication of reptile life so early as the time of the
coal-formation; but as the fossil remains of a reptile have now been
found in Old Red Sandstone, at Elgin, in Scotland, the original
importance of the discovery in this respect may be regarded as
lessened.

Last year, some slabs from Potsdam, in Canada, were brought to
England, and deposited in the museum of the Geological Society.
Belonging as these slabs do to a formation coeval with those in which
the earliest fossils were hitherto found, it was startling to find
them marked with numerous foot-tracks of what appeared to have been
reptiles. It seemed to shew, that the inhabitants of the world in that
early age were not quite so low in the scale of being as