HUGH MILLER ON FISHING. 473 



Sir David Brewster, with whom for the last 

 ten years I have spent a few very agreeable 

 days every year at Christmas, under the roof 

 of a common friend, — one of the landed 

 proprietors of Fifeshire. Sir David's estimate 

 of the writer is, I fear, greatly too high, but 

 his statement of facts regarding him is cor- 

 rect ; and I think you will find it quite full 

 enough for the purposes of a brief memoir. 

 With his article I send you one of my own, 

 written about six years ago for the same pe- 

 riodical, as the subject is one in which, from 

 its connection with your master study, — the 

 natural history of fishes, — you may take 

 more interest than most men. It embodies, 

 from observation, what may be regarded as 

 the natural history of the fisherman, and de- 

 scribes some curious scenes and appearances 

 which I witnessed many years ago when en- 

 gaged, during a truant boyhood, in prosecut- 

 ing the herring fishery as an amateur. Many 

 of my observations of natural phenomena date 

 from this idle, and yet not wholly wasted, 

 period of my life. 



With the volumes I send also a few casts 

 of my less fragile specimens of Asterolepis. 

 Two of the number, those of the external and 

 internal surfaces of the creature's cranial buck- 



