138 FAMOUS SCOTS 



fully merited the detailed reply by Miller, in 1847, in 

 the Footprints of the Creator, which he appropriately 

 dedicated to Sir Philip Egerton, the highest authority 

 on fossil fishes. 



Chambers and his school had largely subscribed to 

 the doctrines of Oken, by which no organism had been 

 created of larger size than an infusorial point, and no 

 organism created which was not microscopic ; whatever 

 exists larger, man himself included, having been de- 

 veloped and not created. To this Miller replies that 

 this at least is not the testimony of the rocks. If it 

 were true, it would follow that the oldest fossils would 

 be small, and low in organisation. But, so far is this 

 from being the case that the oldest organisms, whether 

 that be the asterolepis or the cephalaspidce or the 

 acauthidcz, are large and high. One asterolepis found 

 at Thurso measures over twelve feet, and a Russian 

 specimen described by Professor Asmus of Dorpat 

 seems to have reached the astonishing length of twenty- 

 three feet. Thus, the earliest organisms 'instead of 

 taking their place, agreeably to the demands of the 

 development hypothesis, among the sprats, sticklebacks, 

 and minnows of their class, took their place among its 

 huge and basking sharks, gigantic sturgeons, and bulky 

 sword-fishes. They were giants, not dwarfs.' 



The prevalence of the brachiopods in the Silurian 

 period over the cephalaspida proves little. What the 

 naturalist has to deal with is not quantity but quality, 

 1 not the number of the low, but the standing of the 



