420 MAN OF SCIENCE. 



first ages of ganoidal existence, fossils either without 

 duplicate, or in a better state of keeping than else- 

 where, which may serve to show them that at least 

 one of the pagesf of the geological record (that which 

 you were the first to open) is more fully and clearly 

 written in the rocks of our native country than in per- 

 haps those of any other. My set of the remains of the 

 Asterolepis is, in particular, very curious and, I believe, 

 unique ; and though I do not know that I can say 

 much regarding them in addition to what I have 

 already said in my little work The Footprints, it may 

 be something to verify and illustrate by fossils so rare 

 and little known what in the work I had to illustrate 

 by but a set of greatly reduced woodcuts. 



' I had the pleasure of hearing, a few days ago, from 

 Professor Agassiz. He is doing me the honour of 

 editing, at the request of a book publisher, an American 

 edition of my Footprints, and I am at present engaged 

 in making him a set of casts from some of my less 

 fragile specimens of Asterolepis, on which he may pos- 

 sibly found some of his notes. At least two of the 

 fossils, that of the interior and exterior surface of the 

 cranial buckler of this huge ganoid, come out with 

 beautiful effect in the plaster, and if I thought you 

 would attach any interest to them, I would have much 

 pleasure in sending you a pair. The interior surface, 

 when viewed in a slant light, is quite sculpturesque in 

 appearance. From a curious combination of plates, an 

 angel robed and winged seems to stand in the centre, 

 and the effect is at once singular, and, to at least the 

 geological eye, beautiful ; so much so that I propose 

 getting a pair of them framed/ 



Hugh Miller was a tenderly affectionate parent, and 

 never, until the last year of his life, when the serenity 



