264 HUGH MILLER 



Ever after his first day's experience as an appren- 

 ticed mason in a stone-quarry, of which he has left 

 more than one impressive account, he was led to 

 interest himself in the diversified characters of the 

 rocks of the district. Even as a boy he had been 

 familiar with the more obvious varieties of stone to 

 be met with in a tract of country wherein the sedi- 

 mentary formations of the Lowlands and the crystalline 

 masses of the Highlands have been thrown side by side. 

 But he had been attracted to them rather on account 

 of their singular shapes or brilliant colours, than from 

 any regard to what might have been their different 

 modes of origin. Now, however, he had discovered 

 that these rocks are really monuments, wherein are 

 recorded portions of the past history of the earth, 

 and he was full of hope that by patient study he 

 might yet be able to decipher them. The supply of 

 elementary treatises and text-books of science, in the 

 present day so abundant, had hardly at that time 

 begun to come into existence. Geology, indeed, 

 had but recently attained a recognised position as a 

 distinct branch of science. And even had the young 

 stone-mason been able to possess himself of the whole 

 of the scanty geological literature of the time, it 

 included no book that would have solved for him 

 the problems that daily confronted him as he pursued 

 his labours in the quarry, or rambled in leisure hours 

 along the shore. The best treatise which could have 

 fallen into his hands and which would have been full 

 of enlightenment and suggestion for him — Playfair's 

 immortal Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory — had 

 appeared seventeen years before ; but we have no 



