I recognize this as a well-adapted thing to say, to divert attention
from a discorrelate.
All phenomena are "explained" in the terms of the Dominant of their era.
This is why we give up trying really to explain, and content ourselves
with expressing. Devils that might print marks in snow are correlates to
the third Dominant back from this era. So it was an adjustment by
nineteenth-century correlates, or human tropisms, to say that the marks
in the snow were clawed. Hoof-like marks are not only horsey but
devilish. It had to be said in the nineteenth century that those prints
showed claw-marks. We shall see that this was stated by Prof. Owen, one
of the greatest biologists of his day--except that Darwin didn't think
so. But I shall give reference to two representations of them that can
be seen in the New York Public Library. In neither representation is
there the faintest suggestion of a claw-mark. There never has been a
Prof. Owen who has explained: he has correlated.
Another adaptation, in the later accounts, is that of leading this
discorrelate to the Old Dominant into the familiar scenery of a fairy
story, and discredit it by assimilation to the conventionally
fictitious--so the idea of the baying, terrified hounds, and forest like
enchanted forests, which no one dared to enter. Hunting parties were
organized, but the baying, terrified hounds do not appear in
contemporaneous accounts.
The story of the kangaroo looks like adaptation to needs for an animal
that could spring far, because marks were found in the snow on roofs of
houses. But so astonishing is the extent of snow that was marked that
after a while another kangaroo was added.
But the marks were in single lines.
My own acceptance is that not less than a thousand one-legged kangaroos,
each shod with a very small horseshoe, could have marked that snow of
Devonshire.
London _Times_, Feb 16, 1855:
"Considerable sensation has been caused in the towns of Topsham,
Lymphstone, Exmouth, Teignmouth, and Dawlish, in Devonshire, in
consequence of the discovery of a vast number of foot tracks of a most
strange and mysterious description."
The story is of an incredible multiplicity of marks discovered in the
morning of Feb. 8, 1855, in the snow, by the inhabitants of many towns
and regions between towns. This great area must of course be disregarded
by Prof. Owen and the other correlators. The tracks were in all kinds of
unaccountable places: in gardens enclosed by high walls, and up on the
tops of houses, as well as in the open fields. There was in Lymphstone
scarcely one unmarked garden. We've had heroic disregards but I think
that here disregard was titanic. And, because they occurred in single
lines, the marks are said to have been "more like those of a biped than
of a quadruped"--as if a biped would place one foot precisely ahead of
another--unless it hopped--but then we have to think of a thousand, or
of thousands.
It is said that the marks were "generally 8 inches in advance of each
other."
"The impression of the foot closely resembles that of a donkey's shoe,
and measured from an inch and a half, in some instances, to two and a
half inches across."
Or the impressions were cones in incomplete, or crescentic basins.
The diameters equaled diameters of very young colts' hoofs: too small to
be compared with marks of donkey's hoofs.
"On Sunday last the Rev. Mr. Musgrave alluded to the subject in his
sermon and suggested the possibility of the footprints being those of a
kangaroo, but this could scarcely have been the case, as they were found
on both sides of the Este. At present it remains a mystery, and many
superstitious people in the above-named towns are actually afraid to go
outside their doors after night."
The Este is a body of water two miles wide.
London _Times_, March 6, 1855:
"The interest in this matter has scarcely yet subsided, many inquiries
still being made into the origin of the footprints, which caused so much
consternation upon the morning of the 8th ult. In addition to the
circumstances mentioned in the _Times_ a little while ago, it may be
stated that at Dawlish a number of persons sallied out, armed with guns
and other weapons, for the purpose, if possible, of discovering and
destroying the animal which was supposed to have been so busy in
multiplying its footprints. As might have been expected, the party
returned as they went. Various speculations have been made as to the
cause of the footprints. Some have asserted that they are those of a
kangaroo, while others affirm that they are the impressions of claws of
large birds driven ashore by stress of weather. On more than one
occasion reports have been circulated that an animal from a menagerie
had been caught, but the matter at present is as much involved in
mystery as ever it was."
In the _Illustrated London News_, the occurrence is given a great deal
of space. In the issue of Feb. 24, 1855, a sketch is given of the
prints.