XXVllL HUGH MILLER. 



at least eight feet three inches, or from nine feet nine to nine 

 feet ten inches. The remains of an Asterolepis found by- 

 Mr Dick at Thurso indicate a length of from twelve feet five 

 to thirteen feet eight inches ; and one of the Russian speci- 

 mens of Professor Asmus must have been from eighteen to 

 twenty-three feet long. " Hence," says Mr Miller, " in the 

 not unimportant circumstance of size, the most ancient Coe- 

 lacanths yet known, instead of taking their places, agreeably 

 to the demands of the development hypothesis, among the 

 sprats, sticklebacks, and minnows of their class, took their 

 place among its huge basking sharks, gigantic sturgeons, and 

 bulky swordfishes. They were giants, not dwarfs." Again, 

 judging by the analogies which its structure exhibits to that 

 of fishes of the existing period, the Asterolepis must have been 

 a fish high in the scale of organization. 



A specimen of Asterolepis discovered by Mr Dick among 

 the Thurso rocks, and sent to Mr Miller, exhibited the sin- 

 gular phenomenon of a quantity of thick tar lying beneath 

 it, which stuck to the fingers when lifting the pieces of rock. 

 " What had been once the nerves, muscles, and blood of this an- 

 cient ganoid, still lay under its bones," — a phenomenon which 

 our author had previously seen beneath the body of a poor 

 suicide, whose grave in a sandy bank had been laid open by 

 the encroachments of a river, the sand beneath it having been 

 " consolidated into a dark-coloured pitchy mass," extending 

 a full yard beneath the body. In like manner, the animal 

 juices of the Asterolepis had preserved its remains, by " the 

 jDervading bitumen, greatly more conservative in its efifects 

 than the oil and gum of an old Egyptian undertaker." The 

 bones, though black as pitch, retained to a considerable de- 

 gree the peculiar qualities of the original substance, in the 

 same manner as the adipocere of wet burying- grounds pre- 

 serves fresh and green the bones which it incloses. 



In support of his anti-development views, Mr Miller de- 



