[Illustration: FIG. 2.--TRACKS OF BRONTOZOUM.]
You see the singular series of footmarks, drawn of its natural size in
the large diagram hanging up here (Fig. 2), which I owe to the kindness
of my friend Professor Marsh, with whom I had the opportunity recently
of visiting the precise locality in Massachusetts in which these tracks
occur. I am, therefore, able to give you my own testimony, if needed,
that the diagram accurately represents what we saw. The valley of the
Connecticut is classical ground for the geologist. It contains great
beds of sandstone, covering many square miles, which have evidently
formed a part of an ancient sea-shore, or, it may be, lake-shore. For a
certain period of time after their deposition, these beds have remained
sufficiently soft to receive the impressions of the feet of whatever
animals walked over them, and to preserve them afterwards, in exactly
the same way as such impressions are at this hour preserved on the
shores of the Bay of Fundy and elsewhere. The diagram represents the
track of some gigantic animal, which walked on its hind legs. You see
the series of marks made alternately by the right and by the left foot;
so that, from one impression to the other of the three-toed foot on the
same side, is one stride, and that stride, as we measured it, is six
feet nine inches.
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