sand-stone that underlies the chalk formation, and occurs in the lower green sand; and the imprint had been formed long ages before horses or Druid blacksmiths had worn or made hoof-plates on the more recent and superficial strata of our present earth.
Sir C. Lyell has given an opinion with regard to this curiosity. He says, ' Most of the horse-shoe impressions, of which I have seen a great many in the older stratified rocks of Scotland, have been thought to imply the former presence of medusæ, but this is a mere conjecture, derived from finding similar impressions made on the sands on which such gelatinous bodies rest. They have nothing to do with the footprints of horses.'
Professor Tennant, of the Strand, London, most obligingly undertook to explain the nature of the horse-shoe imprint, and the mode of its formation. It was only necessary for him to fit into it a petrified zoophyte, whose base, like the bottom of a champagne bottle, had perhaps made scores of these 'Man Friday' tracks, to settle the question. One of these creatures had settled itself upon the soft sand, when there was nobody present to note the circumstance; the almost circular indent made by its cup-like basis had escaped obliteration, the sand became rock,—fine, close, and hard enough to sharpen a scythe-blade, and to render the Devonshire scythe-stone pits famous; and long after subsequent races of creatures had passed away—even the Druids and aboriginal horses, the whilom resting-place of this half-animal, half-vegetable, had been revealed, and a chip knocked off one of its sides. So much for the traditions of hoof-prints.
