SCIENTIFIC CHARACTERISTICS 277 



Hugh Miller's researches among the Old Red Sand- 

 stone fishes showed him to be above all a naturalist 

 and palaeontologist, capable of expending any needful 

 amount of patient labour in working out the minutest 

 details of organic structure. In other fields of geo- 

 logical inquiry, while he was far from undervaluing 

 the importance of detail, he avoided the recapitulation 

 of it in his writings. It interested him, indeed, only 

 in so far as it enabled him to reach some broad con- 

 clusion or to fill in the canvas of some striking picture 

 of bygone aspects of the earth's surface. Hence he 

 did not apply himself to the minute investigation of 

 problems of geological structure, and when he under- 

 took any inquiry in that direction he was apt to start 

 rather from the palaeontological than the physical side. 

 Thus the work of his last years along the shores of 

 the Firth of Forth, wherein he sought to accumulate 

 proofs of the comparatively recent upheaval of the 

 land, was mainly based on the position of shells with 

 reference to their present habitat in the adjacent seas. 

 As a youth enthusiastically geological, 1 was privileged 

 to enjoy his friendship, sometimes accompanying him 

 on an excursion, and always spending an evening with 

 him after one of his autumn journeys, that we might 

 exchange the results of our several peregrinations. 

 Only a few weeks before his death, on the last of 

 those memorable evenings, he had his trophy of shells 

 spread on the table, which enabled him to prove that 

 at no very distant date Scotland was cut in two by 

 a sea-strait that connected the Firths of Forth and 

 Clyde. He had found marine shells at Bucklyvie, 

 on the flat ground about midway between the two 



