LETTER TO A CHILD. 313 



news to the public in a book on the Old Red Sandstone. 

 You remind me, dear Alie, of the stones and fossils 

 which I used to point out to you on the shore of Cro- 

 marty. I have written a whole book about them, with 

 curious-looking prints in it, the portraits of fish that 

 lived so very long ago that there were no men in the 

 world at the time to give them names. But they have 

 all got names now, stiff-looking Greek names, which 

 only scholars can understand. One of them has been 

 named after me, PtericMhys Milleri, which means Mil- 

 ler s ivinged fish, and I send you prints of it that you 

 may see what a strange-looking creature it was. By 

 the way, have you not great chalk cliffs at Hastings ? 

 There are very curious fossils found in chalk, sea-eggs, 

 of a kind no longer found alive, spindle-shaped stones, 

 called Belcmnites, other stones called Ammonites, that 

 resemble coiled snakes, cockle-like shells with spines on 

 their backs, and a great many other curious things 

 besides that were once living creatures. 



' I trust you will remember me to Aunt Munro, 

 whose kindness to me in Cromarty I very often remem- 

 ber, and who has since been very kind to my sister 

 Jane. I dare say that by answering your letter, though 

 at this late time, I have made her lose her wager. You 

 know lose it she must, if there was no particular time 

 specified. I am very, very busy in these days, thinking, 

 reading, writing, beating one day, beaten the next ; 

 called a blockhead at one tune without believing it, 

 believing it at another without being called it ; living, 

 in short, a hurried, bustling, fighting sort of life. It is 

 very seldom I can command leisure enough to write 

 letters, and sometimes when I have the leisure I want 

 the will. But you see I have at length written to you, 

 and had it not been for one circumstance, of which I 



