HUGH MILLER. XL 



wanted that physical activity which the observation of Na- 

 ture demands. Our Scottish geologist, on the contrary, in 

 vigorous health, and with an iron frame, rushed to the rockii 

 and the sea-shore in search of the instruction which was not 

 provided for him at school, and which he could find no books 

 to supply. 



After receiving this measure of education, Mr Miller set 

 out in February 1821 with a heavy heart, as he himself con- 

 fesses, " to make his first acquaintance with a life of labour 

 and restraint :" — 



" I was but a slim, loose- jointed boy at the time, fond of the pretty 

 intangibilities of romance, and of dreaming when broad awake ; and, wo- 

 f ul change ! I was now going to work at what Bums has instanced in 

 his ' Twa Dogs' as one of the most disagreeable of all employments,— to 

 work in a quarry. Bating the passing uneasiness occasioned by a few 

 gloomy anticipations, the portion of my life which had already gone by 

 had been happy beyond the common lot. I had been a wanderer among 

 rocks and woods, — a reader of curious books, when I could get them, — 

 a gleaner of old traditionary stories ; and now I was going to exchange 

 all my day-dreams and all my amusements for the kind of life in which 

 men toil every day that they may be enabled to eat, and eat every day 

 that they may be enabled to toil. The quarry in which I wrought lay 

 on the southern shore of a noble inland bay, or frith rather (the Bay of 

 Cromarty), with a little clear stream on the one side, and a thick fir 

 wood on the other. It had been opened in the Old Red Sandstone of 

 the district, and was overtopped by a huge bank of diluvial clay, and 

 which rose over it in some places to the height of nearly thirty feet.'' — 

 Old Red Sandstone, p. 4. 



After removing the loose fragments below, picks, and 

 wedges, and levers were applied in vain by our author and 

 his brother workmen to tear up and remove the huge strata 

 beneath. Blasting by gunpowder became necessary. A mass 

 of the diluvial clay came tumbling down, "bearing with it 

 two dead birds, that in a recent storm had crept into one of 

 the deeper fissures, to die in the shelter." While admiring 

 the pretty cock goldfinch, and the light-blue and gi-ayish- 

 yellow woodpecker, and moralizing on their fate, the work- 



