XXxii PROOFS, ILLUSTRATIONS, AUTHORITIES, ETC. 



meaningless anomaly," etc. It may be answered : Hundreds of the 

 now admitted facts of science, including many of geology itself, have 

 been objected to on similar grounds, yet have made their way, and 

 been ultimately found not irreconcileable with the doctrines on which 

 the objections were based. Mr. Miller himself says, it is " not im- 

 probable that for every year during which man has lived upon earth, 

 the Pterichthys and its contemporaries may have lived a century." 

 Can he conscientiously say that he is not here advancing something 

 which, in the eyes of nine-tenths of Christendom, is destructive of 

 the authority of that record on whose infallibility the truth of 

 Christianity rests ? As a British Christian of the }'ear 1800, would 

 he not have condemned any one who made such a declaration as this 

 which he now, in 1849, puts forth in perfect security ? Until he can 

 answer these questions in the negative, I must protest against any 

 such mode of discussing a purely scientific question. 



Mr. Miller takes, from a low part of the Old Bed Sandstone forma- 

 tion, a fossil fi^h, the Asterolepis, on which he proposes to try the 

 question, whether the earliest fishes were low in the scale, as the 

 development hypothesis requires. It is, he says, " the oldest organism 

 yet discovered in the most ancient geological system of Scotland 

 in which vertebrate remains occur." In several chapters he minutely 

 describes the parts which he has discovered of this animal; showing 

 so much curious work in its structure, as doubtless must prepare 

 the bulk of his readers for the final assertion, that, " instead of being, 

 as the development hypothesis would require, a fish low in its or- 

 ganization, it seems to have ranged on the level of the highest 

 ichthyic-reptilian families ever called into existence." " Instead of 

 taking their places," he also declares, " agreeably to the demands of 

 the development hypothesis, among the sprats, stii-klebacks, and 

 minnows of their class, [these ancient ganoids] took their place 

 among its huge basking sharks, gigantic sturgeons, and bulky sword- 

 fishes." It is lamentable to think how many well-meaning people 

 must have responded with joy to these conclusions, while the fact is 

 that the hundred pages of clever writing and vivid illustration in 

 which they have been prepared for, are merely an example of labour 

 thrown away. 



In the first place, while it is acknowledged by Mr. Miller that there 

 are fossil fish in a lower formation, the fact, if it were one, that these 

 Old Red Sandstone fish are not quite at the base of their class is of 

 absolutely no importance. It will be found that his acknowledgment 

 on this point is only made with a liberality somewhat unfortunate 

 for himself. 



In the second place, the Asterolepis and its contemporaries were 

 low fish. This is the admission of one whom Mr. Miller loves to 

 quote, Professor Agassiz, who (see Proofs, Illustrations, ^c.,No. 7) 

 expressly says of the fishes of the early period, " They were not so 

 fully developed as most of our fishes, being, like the sturgeon, 

 arrested, as it were, in their development." On the point of large 

 bulk, which Mr. Miller speaks of as most important to mark the 

 high character of these ganoids, take a decision from the same 



