HUGH MILLER 121 



possession of the field. Now the tide has turned, and 

 the geologist is threatened with eclipse. Of the doyen 

 of the new school, Richard Owen, Professor Huxley 

 says: ' Hardly any of those speculations and determina- 

 tions have stood the test of investigation. I am not 

 sure that any one but the historian of anatomical science 

 is ever likely to recur to them. Obvious as are the 

 merits of Owen's anatomical and palaeontological work 

 to every expert, it is necessary to be an expert to discuss 

 them ; and countless pages of analysis of his memoirs 

 would not have made the general reader any wiser than 

 he was at first.' Even Buckland is regarded by Boyd 

 Dawkins as belonging to a type of extinct men. Thus 

 is the deposition effected of the scientific Pope of the 

 day. If such rapid supersession be the law, who can 

 expect in departing to leave footprints in the annals of 

 so shifting a science ? Who can be a fixed star ? 



There is some comfort in the reflection that, as in 

 Political Economy, so in Geology, it is the inspiration 

 that lives and not the mere amount of positive con- 

 tribution to knowledge. Bacon has effected nothing 

 for science ; in everything that he attempted it may be 

 shown that he was wrong and that his methods have led 

 to nothing. His name is associated with no new 

 discovery, no new law, not even with a new or inductive 

 method. But his niche is secure through the spirit in 

 which he approached the question ; if he did not see 

 the Promised Land, at least he was a firm believer in its 

 existence, and that spirit has outlived his unhappy 



