148 FAMOUS SCOTS 



with descriptions and names which would have been 

 revised, and perhaps entirely recast, by some subsequent 

 more competent biologist. 



' Hugh Miller's unique position is that of a poetic 

 student of the geological side of Nature, who possessed 

 an unrivalled gift of vividly communicating to others the 

 impressions made on his own mind by the observation of 

 geological fact and by the inferences which such observa- 

 tion seemed to warrant. His lively imagination led him 

 to seize more especially on those aspects of the past history 

 of the earth which could be most vividly realised. He 

 loved to collect the plants and animals of which the 

 remains have been entombed among the rocks, and to 

 re-people with them the scenes in which they lived long 

 ages ago. Each scattered fact was marshalled by his 

 eager fancy into its due place in the mental picture which 

 he drew of such long-vanished lands, lakes, rivers, and 

 seas. His enthusiasm supplied details where facts were 

 wanting, and enabled him to kindle in his readers not 

 a little of the burning interest which he felt himself. 



'Long study of the best English literature had given Miller 

 a rare mastery of his mother tongue. For elegance of 

 narrative combined with clearness and vividness of descrip- 

 tion, I know no writing in the whole of scientific literature 

 superior, or, indeed, perhaps equal to his. There can be 

 no doubt that this literary gift, appealing as it did to so 

 wide a circle of readers, formed a chief source of the 

 influence which he exerted among his contemporaries. It 

 was this that enabled him to spread so widely a curiosity 

 to know something of geological science, and an interest in 

 the progress of geological discovery. I do not think that 

 the debt which geology owes to him for these services, in 



