228 LOUIS AGASSIZ. [CHAP. ix. 



I need not say how heartily welcome you are to the specimens I 

 send you, should you have any wish to retain them. . . . Do I ask 

 too much, honored Sir, when I request a very few lines from you 

 to say whether the formation in which these fossils occur be a 

 freshwater one, or otherwise, and whether the small scaled fish with 

 the teeth be of a kind already known to geologists or a new one? 

 I am much alone in this remote corner a kind of Robinson 

 Crusoe in geology --and somewhat in danger of the savages who 

 cannot be made to understand why, according to Job, a man should 

 be "making leagues with the stones of the field." But I am san- 

 guine enough to hope that the good nature, of which my friend Dr. 

 Malcolmson speaks so warmly, may lead its owner to devote a few 

 spare minutes to render these leagues useful to me. 



I am, I trust, sufficiently acquainted with geology, rightly to 

 value the decisions of its highest authority. 



I am, honored Sir, with sincere respect, 



Your most obedient Servant, 



HUGH MILLER. 



P. S.-- Since writing the above, I have picked up a specimen 

 which, I am pretty sure, you would deem interesting, but for which 

 I have unluckily no room in the box. It contains parts of the 

 tuberculated fossil, and among the rest the teeth of the creature. 

 These last somewhat resemble the teeth of a lobster, being appar- 

 ently cut out of the solid part of the jaw rather than fixed in it. 



H. M. 



Miller found more specimens, and more perfect ones, 

 in newly discovered beds of Old Red of Nairnshire, and 

 when Agassiz visited him in 1840, he showed him three 

 well-preserved species of the Ptcrichthys, and the wings 

 of a fourth. To one of these remarkable animals, look- 

 ing like the letter T, Agassiz has given the appropriate 

 name of Pterichthys Milleri. Complete and good speci- 

 mens were exhibited at the Glasgow Meeting of 1840, 

 and some restorations of the animals were made by 



