HUGH MILLER ON FISHING. 473 



Sir David Brewster, with whom for the last 

 ten years I have spent a few very agreeable 

 days every year at Christmas, under the roof 

 of a common friend, one of the landed 

 proprietors of Fifeshire. Sir David's estimate 

 of the writer is, I fear, greatly too high, but 

 his statement of facts regarding him is cor- 

 rect ; and I think you will find it quite full 

 enough for the purposes of a brief memoir. 

 With his article I send you one of my own, 

 written about six years ago for the same pe- 

 riodical, as the subject is one in which, from 

 its connection with your master study, the 

 natural history of fishes, you may take 

 more interest than most men. It embodies, 

 from observation, what may be regarded as 

 the natural history of the fisherman, and de- 

 scribes some curious scenes and appearances 

 which I witnessed many years ago when en- 

 gaged, during a truant boyhood, in prosecut- 

 ing the herring fishery as an amateur. Many 

 of my observations of natural phenomena date 

 from this idle, and yet not wholly wasted, 

 period of my life. 



With the volumes I send also a few casts 

 of my less fragile specimens of Asterolepis. 

 Two of the number, those of the external and 

 internal surfaces of the creature's cranial buck- 



