Dr. Deane thinks it strange that I should have been so tardy in awarding justice to those who preceded him in the discovery of these tracks; and he speaks of them (Dr. Dwight, an aged and respectable physician; Mr. Moody, a farmer, but a man of public education; and Mr. Wilson, an ingenious mechanic) as not having 'the slightest comprehension of the origin or character' of the tracks. . . . However incompetent they are, they certainly discovered these tracks earlier than Dr. Deane, and came to the same conclusion as he did, as to their being bird tracks, and for similar reasons; and I might name fifty others, who, upon looking at my specimens, have expressed the same view at once; so that it does not require scientific investigation to reach this conclusion. But it does demand it to establish the conclusion; and this is what I claim to have done independently.