⁹ dot, on the other hand, may have its outline so broken as to appear as though made 189by a bird or mammal. Still, tracks are a safe guide in the long run, and, whether our opinion as to them be correct or not, the rambler finds something worth seeing, and he goes on anything but a wild-goose chase who sometimes finds himself mistaken. It is well to check our confidence occasionally and realize the limits of our power.

Opportunity afforded while in camp, and I made a short study of footprints. With a field-glass I noted¹⁰ many birds, and then going to the spot, examined the impressions their feet had made. A night-heron did not come down flatly upon its feet with outspread toes, and so the tracks were quite different from the impressions made when the bird walked. Crows, I noticed, both hopped¹¹ and walked, and the marks were very different, the former being broad and ill-defined in comparison with the traces of the same bird’s stately tread. Had the bird not been seen, any one would have supposed two creatures had been keeping close company, or that some one individual had passed by in the very path of another. The purple grakle and red-winged blackbird made tracks too much alike to be distinguished¹², yet these 190birds have not the same size or shape of foot. A water-snake came up over the mud and left a line of marks upon the sand that could not be recognized as that of any animal, except it might be a faint resemblance to the trail of a mussel. I chased a dozen crayfish over a mud flat, and their backward and sidewise leapings caused an old gunner to say there had been plover about. A blue-winged teal made a long double line of dents¹³ in the sand before it rose clear of the beach, and these were very like many a footprint I had previously¹⁵ seen. What, then, must we think of the fossil footprints of which so much has been written? As different species, a long series of these impressions in the rock have been described and given high-sounding titles. I am not entitled to an opinion, but have doubts, nevertheless, of the wisdom of considering every slightly different form as made by a different creature. I have given my reasons, and will only add another instance, one of greater significance than all as bearing upon the question. I startled a

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