Ichnographs of the Connecticut Valley Sandstone, plate 10, page 93. Image courtesy of Historic Deerfield Library, Deerfield, Massachusetts.
Ichnographs of the Connecticut Valley Sandstone, plate 10, page 93. Image courtesy of Historic Deerfield Library, Deerfield, Massachusetts.
This is a lithograph of a track from the same Middletown slab in the previous two slides, taken from James Deane's book, "Ichnographs of the Connecticut Valley Sandstone," plate 10, page 93. The lithographs show in delicate detail the contours of the foot padding and talons. In the book, at left beneath the image it says: "On Stone from nature by J. Deane, M.D.," and on the right, "T. Sinclair's lith. Phila." Deane liked to use the colorizing because it more closely approximated the reddish tinge to certain strata of the New Red Sandstone in which the tracks are embedded.
Deane used a variety of techniques for his illustrations in the book: lithographs that he prepared himself, photographs taken by a photographer under his direction, and drawings he made himself. When he died before finishing his book, one of the reasons his friends and colleagues decided to finish it for him was because they felt that "such exquisite specimens of art, such contributions to science," should not be "utterly sacrificed." The fossils shown were not fully described scientifically in words, because the colleagues did not feel themselves competent to do so. In any case, Edward Hitchcock's "Ichnology of New England" had just been published, so it did not seem necessary. They saw Deane's work as a "coffee table" book.