HUGH MILLER 147 



Murchison through his occupancy of the Murchisonian 

 Chair of Geology in the University of Edinburgh. Both 

 Miller and Murchison came out of the Black Isle. In 

 a communication to us of the date 22nd December 

 1895, he thus writes : 



* Hugh Miller will always occupy a peculiar place in the 

 history of geology, and in the ranks of geological literature. 

 He was not in any sense a trained geologist. He lacked 

 the habit of patient and detailed investigation in depart- 

 ments of the science that did not specially interest him, but 

 which were essential as a basis of accurate induction and 

 successful speculation. In all that relates to the strati- 

 graphical sequence of the formations, for example, he 

 accepted what had been done by others without any 

 critical examination of it. Thus, in his own region the 

 north of Scotland he believed that a girdle of Old Red 

 Sandstone nearly encircles the older crystalline rocks of 

 Ross and Sutherland a view then generally adopted. 

 Yet he had actually walked over ground where, with even 

 an elementary knowledge of structural geology, he could 

 have corrected the prevalent error. It is, of course, no 

 reproach to him that he left matters as he found them in 

 that respect ; his genius did not find in such questions the 

 appropriate field of its exertion. 



' ; Nor though he occupied himself all through his life with 

 fossils, can he be called a palaeontologist. He had no 

 education in comparative anatomy, and was thus incom- 

 petent to deal adequately as a naturalist with the organisms 

 which he discovered. He was himself perfectly conscious 

 of the limitations of his powers in this department, and thus 

 wisely refrained from burdening the literature of science 



