. The testimony of the rocks; . ical naturalists as representative of a reversed processin the course of being, — of a downward, sinking career,from the vertebrate antetype towards greatly lower typesin the invertebrate divisions! The fallen spirit is repre-sented in revelation by what we are now taught to recog-nize in science as a degraded reptile. Birds make their first appearance in a Ked Sandstone de-posit of the United States in the valley of the Connecticut,which was at one time supposed to belong to the TriassicSystem, but which is now held to be at least not older thanthe times of the
. The testimony of the rocks; . ical naturalists as representative of a reversed processin the course of being, — of a downward, sinking career,from the vertebrate antetype towards greatly lower typesin the invertebrate divisions! The fallen spirit is repre-sented in revelation by what we are now taught to recog-nize in science as a degraded reptile. Birds make their first appearance in a Ked Sandstone de-posit of the United States in the valley of the Connecticut,which was at one time supposed to belong to the TriassicSystem, but which is now held to be at least not older thanthe times of the Lias. No fragments of the skeletons ofbirds have yet been discovered in formations older than theChalk: the Connecticut remains are those of footprints ex-clusively ; and yet they tell their extraordinary story, so faras it extends, with remarkable precision and distinctness. HISTORY OF ANIMALS. 113 They were apparently all of the Grallae or stilt order ofbirds, — an order to which the cranes, herons, and bustards Fig. 67r. BIED TRACKS OF THE CONNECTICUT. {Lias or Oolite.) belong, with the ostriches and cassowaries, and which ischaracterized by possessing but three toes on each foot (onespecies of ostrich has but two), or, if a fourth toe be present,so imperfectly is it developed in most of the cases, that itfails to reach the ground. And in almost all the footprintsof the primeval birds of the Connecticut there are onlythree toes exhibited. Peculiar, ill understood laws regulatethe phalangal divisions of the various animals. It is a lawof the human kind, for instance, that the thumb should10* 114 THE PAL^ONTOLOGICAL consist of but three phalanges; while the fingers, even thesmallest, consist .of four. And, in the same way, it is a lawgenerally exemplified among birds, that of the three toeswhich correspond to the fingers, the inner toe should becomposed of three phalanges, the middle or largest toe offour phalanges, and the outer toe, though but second inpoint of size, of
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