Another correspondent writes that, though the prints in all cases
resembled hoof marks, there were indistinct traces of claws--that "an"
otter had made the marks. After that many other witnesses wrote to the
_News_. The correspondence was so great that, in the issue of March
10th, only a selection could be given. There's "a" jumping-rat solution
and "a" hopping-toad inspiration, and then someone came out strong with
an idea of "a" hare that had galloped with pairs of feet held close
together, so as to make impressions in a single line.
London _Times_, March 14, 1840:
"Among the high mountains of that elevated district where Glenorchy,
Glenlyon and Glenochay are contiguous, there have been met with several
times, during this and also the former winter, upon the snow, the tracks
of an animal seemingly unknown at present in Scotland. The print, in
every respect, is an exact resemblance to that of a foal of considerable
size, with this small difference, perhaps, that the sole seems a little
longer, or not so round; but as no one has had the good fortune as yet
to have obtained a glimpse of this creature, nothing more can be said of
its shape or dimensions; only it has been remarked, from the depth to
which the feet sank in the snow, that it must be a beast of considerable
size. It has been observed also that its walk is not like that of the
generality of quadrupeds, but that it is more like the bounding or
leaping of a horse when scared or pursued. It is not in one locality
that its tracks have been met with, but through a range of at least
twelve miles."
In the _Illustrated London News_, March 17, 1855, a correspondent from
Heidelberg writes, "upon the authority of a Polish Doctor of Medicine,"
that on the Piashowa-gora (Sand Hill) a small elevation on the border of
Galicia, but in Russian Poland, such marks are to be seen in the snow
every year, and sometimes in the sand of this hill, and "are attributed
by the inhabitants to supernatural influences."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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