150 Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society. 



housed in our Museum of Science and Art. To fishes Hugh 

 Miller devoted his chief attention, and his collection of Old 

 Eed forms furnished many of the types described and figured 

 by Agassiz in his "Monographic des Poissons Fossiles du 

 Vieux Gres Eouge," and many were also figured by himself in 

 his own works. 



Hugh Miller's fame, however, rests considerably more upon 

 his literary than upon his purely scientific achievements, and 

 he did much more for the progress of fossil ichthyology by the 

 interest which his wonderfully graphic powers of popular 

 exposition excited in the subject, than by original research of 

 a technical character. Yet what he did accomplish in the 

 latter direction shows that he had all the eye, the tastes, and 

 the instincts of the true scientific man, and we can hardly 

 suppress a sigh of regret, when we think what Hugh Miller 

 might have done, had he had a professional education from 

 the beginning, and had he been able to devote his life to the 

 prosecution of original research, while steering clear of the 

 troubled waters of ecclesiastical controversy. 



Among such of Hugh Miller's works as deal principally 

 with geological and palseontological science, beyond a doubt 

 his healthiest and happiest effort is the " Old Eed Sandstone," 

 also one of his earliest (1841). Amidst the fascinating 

 popular descriptions of the scenery, geological structure, and 

 fossil fishes of the region, in which he first wrought as a 

 geologist, we find some genuine touches of original palaeonto- 

 logical observation, which quite sufficiently indicate what his 

 powers in that direction might have been, had they been pro- 

 perly developed. We find, for instance, that he was quite aware 

 that Cheirolepis was not an Acanthodian, though it was 

 classed by Agassiz in that family. We find a very creditable 

 restoration of Osteolepis, infinitely superior to that given by 

 Agassiz some years afterwards, and hardly inferior to that 

 given by the accomplished Pander ; and we find him correctly 

 interpreting as the ventral surface of P^mcA^Ays that aspect of 

 the creature erroneously represented by Agassiz as the dorsal. 

 In his " Footprints of the Creator," published in 1849, he also 

 showed that Agassiz's Folyphractus, supposed by him to be a 

 genus allied to Pterichthys, was nothing more than the cranial 



