The Historian or the Antiquary may have traversed the fields of ancient or of modern battles; and may have pursued the line of march of triumphant Conquerors, whose armies trampled down the most mighty kingdoms of the world; The winds and storms have utterly obliterated the ephemeral impressions of their course. Not a track remains of a single foot, or a single hoof; of all the countless millions 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 are 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]
- ↑ A similar discovery of fossil footsteps has recently been made in Saxony, at the village of Hessberg, near Hildburghausen, in several quarries of gray quartzose sandstone, alternating with beds of red sandstone, nearly of the same age with that of Dumfries. (See Pl. 26'. 26″. 26‴)
The following account of them is collected from notices by Dr. Hohnbaum and Professor Kaup. "The impressions of feet are partly hollow, and partly in relief; all the depressions are upon the upper surfaces of slabs of sandstone, whilst the reliefs are only upon the lower surfaces, covering those which bear the depressions. These reliefs are natural casts, formed in the subjacent footsteps as in moulds. On one slab (see Pl. 26',) six feet long by five feet wide, there occur many footsteps of more than one animal, and of various sizes. The larger impressions, which seem to be of the hind foot, are eight inches long, and five wide. (See Pl. 26″.) One was twelve inches long. Near to each large footstep, and at the regular distance of an inch and a half before it, is a
