Edward Hitchcock's poem “The Sandstone Bird” was published in the December 1836 issue of The Knickerbocker magazine under the pseudonym "Poetaster." In the poem, a sorceress conjures up one of the ancient birds that Hitchcock thought had left the fossil footprints. The bird sees the current state of the earth and of the people who live on it and comments, "Sure ‘tis a place for punishment designed, And not the beauteous happy spot I loved. . . . They hate each other and they hate the world, I can not, will not live in such a spot." And then the bird disappears back into the earth.