XL HUGH MILLER, 



expressions of intellectual power. From a remoter age, and 

 a still greater depth, the primary and secondary rocks have 

 yielded a rich tribute to the chaplet of rank and to the pro- 

 cesses of art. 



Exhibiting, as it peculiarly does, almost all those objects 

 of interest and research, Scotland has been diligently studied 

 both by native and foreign observers ; and she has sent into 

 the geological field a distinguished group of inquirers, who 

 have performed a noble feat in exploring the general struc- 

 ture of the earth, in deciphering its ancient monuments, and 

 in unlocking those storehouses of mineral wealth, from which 

 civilized man derives the elements of that gigantic power 

 which his otherwise feeble arm wields over nature. 



The occurrence of shells on the highest mountains, and 

 the remains of plants and animals, which the most superficial 

 observer could not fail to notice in the rocks around him, 

 have for centuries commanded the attention and exercised 

 the ingenuity of every student of nature. But though sparks 

 of geological truth were from time to time elicited by specu- 

 lative minds, it was not till the end of the last century that 

 its great lights broke forth, and that it took the form and 

 character of one of the noblest of the sciences. Without 

 undervaluing the labours of Werner, and other illustrious 

 foreigners, or those of our southern countrymen, Mitchell and 

 Smith, at the close of the last century, we may characterize 

 the commencement of the present as the brightest period of 

 geological discovery, and place its most active locality in the 

 northern metropolis of our island. It was doubtless from 

 the Royal Society of Edinburgh, as a centre, that a great 

 geological impulse was propagated southward ; and it was by 

 the collision of the Wernerian and Huttonian views, the an- 

 tagonist theories of water and of fire, that men of intellec- 

 tual power were summoned from other studies, and that 

 gi'and truths, which fanaticism and intolerance had hitherto 



