FIRST GEOLOGICAL IMPRESSIONS. 135 



' the remains of a fish, scaled like the coal-fish or had- 

 dock/ another, ' the broken exuviae of a fish of a different 

 species, which, instead of being scaled like the other, 

 seems roughened in the same way as the dog-fish, or the 

 shark/ a third, ' a confused, bituminous -looking mass 

 that has much the appearance of a toad or frog/ a fourth, 

 ' a number of shining plates like those of the tortoise/ a 

 fifth, ' a large oval plate, like an ancient buckler, which 

 seems to have formed part of the skull/ Such were 

 Hugh Miller's first impressions of the pterichthys and the 

 coccosteus. 



The tenacity with which ideas and images, once con- 

 ceived, clung to his mind, is evinced by the fact that 

 some of the illustrations which we have in this chapter 

 recur on all subsequent occasions when he touches upon 

 the subjects here treated. He never tired of explaining 

 the advantage to the geologist of having strata uptilted 

 by volcanic agencies by reference to ' the ease which we 

 find in running the eye over books arranged on the 

 shelves of a library, contrasted with the trouble which 

 they give us in taking them up one after one when they 

 are packed in a deep chest/ The materials of that de- 

 scription of the structure and aspect of the great Cale- 

 donian valley, which he subsequently wrought out with 

 a breadth and a vividness belonging to the highest order 

 of literary art, may all be discovered in this chapter, 

 though they as yet lie about in comparative disorder, the 

 dissevered fragments which the master-hand is one day 

 to arrange into a symmetrical structure. The imaginative 

 faculty by which he threw a mantle of beauty over the 

 scenes that ocular observation, or the restoring processes 

 of scientific reflection, afforded him, is displayed in this 

 essay with a delicate splendour of effect which he hardly 

 surpassed in after-days. ' I remember one day early in 



