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Footprints on the Sands of Time: Hitchcock

FOOTPRINTS OF DINOSAURS, FROM CONNECTICUT SANDSTONE. Showing impressions of the small fore feet (1 and 3). (After Hitchcock.) "the huge animal giant;" Polemarchus gigas, "the huge leader in war," and so on. He concludes a description of some of these creatures in the following words: "Such was the fauna of the sandstone days in the Connecticut Valley. What a wonderful menagerie! Who would believe that such a register lay buried in the strata? To open the leaves, to unroll the papyrus, has been an intensely interesting though difficult task, having all the excitement and marvellous developments of romance. And yet D A FIG. 4.-Portion of a slab, with tracks. (After Hitchcock.) the volume is only partly read. Many a new page, I fancy, will yet be opened, and many a new key obtained to the hieroglyphic record. I am thankful that I have been allowed to see so much by prying between the folded leaves. At first, men supposed that the strange and gigantic races which I described were mere creatures of imagination, like the Gorgons and Chimæras of the ancient poets. But now that hundreds of their footprints, as fresh and distinct as of yesterday, impressed upon the mud, arrest the attention of the sceptic on the ample slabs of our cabinets, he might as reasonably doubt his own corporeal existence as that of these enormous and peculiar races."