XVlll. UUGH MILLER. 



yet so early as 1830, after he had made his jfii'st fossil disco- 

 venes at Cromarty, he composed a paper on the subject (his 

 first published production), which appeared as one of the chap- 

 ters of a small legendary and descriptive work, entitled " The 

 Traditional History of Cromarty," which did not appear till 

 1835. This chapter, entitled " The Antiquary of the World," 

 possesses a high degree of interest. After describing the 

 scene around him in its pictorial aspect, and under the warm 

 associations which link it with existing life, he surveys it 

 with the cool eye of an " antiquary of the world," studying 

 its once buried monuments, and deciphering the alphabet of 

 plants and animals, the hieroglyphics which embosom the his- 

 tory of past times and of successive creations. The gigantic 

 Ben We vis, with its attendant hills, rose abruptly to the w^est; 

 the distant peaks of Ben Yaichard appeared in the south ; 

 and far to the north were descried the lofty hills of Suther- 

 land, and even the Ord-hill of Caithness. Descending from 

 the towers of nature's lofty edifice, he surveys its ruins, its 

 broken sculptures, and its half-defaced inscriptions, as exhi- 

 bited in certain ichthyic remains of the Lower Old Red Sand- 

 stone which had then no name, and which were unknown to 

 the most accomplished geologists. Among these he specially 

 notices " a confused bituminous-looking mass that had much 

 the appearance of a toad or frog," thus shadowing forth in 

 the morning twilight the curious Pterichthys, which he was 

 able afterwards, in better specimens, to exhibit in open day. 

 As we have already referred with some minuteness to the 

 fossils which our author had at this time discovered in the 

 great charnel-house of the old world, we shall indulge our 

 readers with a specimen of the noble sentiments which they 

 inspired, and of the beautiful language in which these senti- 

 ments are clothed. 



" B»ii let us quit this wonderful city of the dead, with all its reclining 

 obelisks, and all its sculptured tumuli, the memorials of a race that exist 



