[4] Dr. Dieffenbach’s New Zealand.
[5] The diamonds found in the Ural chain are supposed to be connected with the carbonaceous grits of the devonian and carboniferous periods, which have been transmuted into metamorphic micaceous rocks, and contain the diamonds between the flakes of mica, just as garnets occur in mica-schist. Captain Franklin discovered diamonds in Bundelkund, imbedded in sandstone, with coal beneath, and supposed to belong to the true carboniferous system.
[6] Westminster Review, No. LXXIX.
[7] The strata in which these tracks occur have since been carefully investigated by Prof. H. D. Rogers, who has ascertained that they belong truly to the carboniferous red shale, and are, therefore, of an age essentially later than that attributed to them. In a communication made to the American Association, Prof. Rogers says:—They occur, indeed, in a geological horizon, only a few hundred feet below the conglomerate which marks the beginning of the productive coal series, in which series similar foot-prints, attributed to batrachian reptiles, had been previously met with in Western Pennsylvania. Instead, therefore, of constituting a register of the antique life earlier than any hitherto discovered, by at least a whole chapter in the geological book, they carry back its age only by a single leaf. The surfaces upon which these interesting foot-prints abound are the smooth, divisional plains separating the beds of red sandstone, and are invariably coated with a fine impalpable material of a once slimy and soft mud; and everything in the texture of these surfaces goes to prove that they were in contact with the air, and were the stages of rest between the alternate depositions of the strata. Many of them are covered with ripple-lines and water-marks, suggestive of the shelving shore, and, with few exceptions, they are spotted over with little circular impressions, imputed to the pattering of rain. All over the successive floors of this ancient world, as delicate and impressible in their texture as so much wax or parchment, are the footsteps and the trails of various creeping things,—the prints of some unknown four-footed creature, thought to be reptilian in its nature, but of whose true affinities the Professor expressed his doubts, trails analogous to those of worms and molluscs, and various other marks, written in hieroglyphics too ancient to be interpreted. The larger foot-prints are, for the most part, five-toed, alternate in the steps, and with the fore feet as large nearly as the hind ones; marks of the scratching and slipping of the feet, and the half effacing passage of the tail, or of some soft portion of the body, are often distinctly legible.
Prof. Agassiz stated his doubts as to the reptilian character of the foot-prints noticed, and, after describing the difference in the arrangement of the locomotive organs of the modern and the ancient fishes, gave it as his belief, that in those early periods there were fishes of a structure which permitted them to walk upon all fours.
[8] Rapport sur les Poissons Fossiles de l’Argile de Londres.
[9] Lyell’s Principles of Geology, vol. i, p. 269.
[10] Restitution of Decayed Intelligence, by Richard Verstegan. London, 8vo, 1605. Noticed in “Chambers’ Journal,” June, 1846.
[11] Dr. Pye Smith on Scripture Geology.
[12] This branch of the argument has also been minutely and ingeniously extended in the last work of Mr. Hugh Miller, “Foot-prints of the Creator,” where the author dwells particularly on the comparative measurements of the different fossils found in different formations; a masterly and felicitous addition to the side of truth.