WILLIAM HALLOWES MILLER. 461 



Alps ; and the description which he once gave to the writer, of him- 

 self sitting at the side of his wife amidst the grand scenery, intent 

 on developing crystallographic formulae while the accomplished artist 

 traced the magnificent outlines of the Dolomite mountains, was a 

 beautiful idyl of science. 



Miller's activities, however, were not confined to the University. 

 In 1838 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society, and in 1856 he 

 was appointed its Foreign Secretary, — a post for which he was emi- 

 nently fitted and which he filled for many years. In 1843 he was 

 selected one of a committee to supex'intend the construction of the 

 new Parliamentary standards of length and weight, to replace those 

 which had been lost in the fire which consumed the Houses of Parlia- 

 ment in 1834, and to Professor Miller was confided the construction 

 of the new standard of weight. His work on this important com- 

 mittee, described in an extended paper published in the Philosophical 

 Transactions for 1856, was a model of conscientious investigation and 

 scientific accuracy. Professor Miller was subsequently a member of 

 a new Royal Commission for " examining into and reporting on the 

 state of the secondary standards, and for considering every question 

 which could affect the primary, secondary, and local standards " ; and 

 in 1870 he was appointed a member of the " Commission Interna- 

 tionale du Metre." His services on this commission were of great 

 value, and it has been said that "there was no member whose opinions 

 had greater weight in influencing a decision upon any intricate and 

 delicate question." 



Valuable, however, as were Professor Miller's public services on 

 these various commissions, his chief work was at the University. His 

 teacher. Dr. William Whewell, — afterwards the Master of Trinity 

 College, — was his immediate predecessor in the Professorship of 

 Mineralogy at Cambridge. This great scholar, whose encyclopa3dic 

 mind could not long be confined in so narrow a field, held the profes- 

 sorship only four years, but during this period he devoted himself with 

 his usual enthusiasm to the study of crystallography, and he accom- 

 plished a most important work in attracting to the same study young 

 Miller, who brought his mathematical training to its elucidation. It 

 was the privilege of Professor Miller to accomplish a unique work, 

 for the like of which a more advanced science, with its multiplicity 

 of details, will offer few opportunities. 



The foundations of crystallography had been laid long before Mil- 

 ler's time. Haiiy is usually regarded as the founder of the science ; 

 for he first discovered the importance of cleavage, and classed the 



