ion of right, and that
whatever has been done by him who rendereth no account to man of his
matters, he had in all ages, and in all places, an unchallengeable right
to do.

The oldest known reptiles appear just a little before the close of the
Old Red Sandstone, just as the oldest known fishes appeared just a
little before the close of the Silurian System. What seems to be the
Upper Old Red of our own country, though there still hangs a shade of
doubt on the subject, has furnished the remains of a small reptile,
equally akin, it would appear, to the lizards and the batrachians; and
what seems to be the Upper Old Red of the United States has exhibited
the foot-tracks of a larger animal of the same class, which not a little
resemble those which would be impressed on recent sand or clay by the
alligator of the Mississippi, did not the alligator of the Mississippi
efface its own footprints (a consequence of the shortness of its legs)
by the trail of its abdomen. In the Coal Measures, the reptiles hitherto
found,--and it is still little more than ten years since the first was
detected,--are all allied, though not without a cross of the higher
crocodilian or lacertian nature, to the batrachian order,--that lowest
order of the reptiles to which the frogs, newts, and salamanders belong.
These reptiles of the carboniferous era, though only a few twelvemonths
ago we little suspected the fact, seem to have been not very rare in our
own neighborhood. My attention was called some time since by Mr. Henry
Cadell,--an intelligent practical geologist,--to certain appearances in
one of the Duke of Buccleuch's coal pits near Dalkeith, which lie
regarded as the tracks of air-breathing quadrupeds; and, after examining
a specimen, containing four footprints, which he had brought above
ground, and which not a little excited my curiosity, we visited the pit
together. And there, in a side working about half a mile from the pit
mouth, and about four hundred feet under the surface, I found the roof
of the coal, which rose at a high angle, traversed by so many
foot-tracks, upwards, downwards, and athwart, that it cost me some
little care to trace the individual lines. At least one of the number,
however,--consisting of eleven footprints of the right and as many of
the left foot--I was able to trace from side to side of the working, a
distance of four yards; and several of the others for shorter spaces.
The prints, which were reverses or casts in a