HUGH MILLER 149 



deepening the popular estimation of the science, and in 

 increasing the number of its devotees, has ever been 

 sufficiently acknowledged. During his lifetime, and for 

 some years afterwards, Hugh Miller was looked upon by 

 the general body of his countrymen as the leading geologist 

 of his day. And this exaggerated but very natural estimate 

 spread perhaps even more extensively in the United 

 States. His books were to be found in the remotest log- 

 hut of the Far West, and on both sides of the Atlantic 

 ideas of the nature and scope of geology were largely 

 drawn from them. 



1 Of the extent and value of Miller's original contribu- 

 tions to geology I am, perhaps, hardly fitted to speak. 

 He was one of my earliest and kindest scientific friends. 

 He used to relate to me the results of his summer 

 rambles before he had time to set them down in writing. 

 He admitted me into the intimacy of his inner thoughts 

 on geological questions and controversies. He brought 

 me completely under the spell of his personal charm, 

 and filled me with an enthusiastic love for the man as 

 well as a passionate admiration for the geologist. Nor 

 has the glamour of that early friendship passed away. I 

 would rather leave to others the invidious task of coldly 

 dissecting Hugh Miller's work and seeing how much of it 

 has been a permanent addition to science, and how much 

 has passed away with : the crudities of advancing know- 

 ledge. I will only say that there cannot be any doubt that 

 his contributions to the stock of geological fact were much 

 less important than the influence which his writings ever 

 had in furthering the spread of an appreciation of geological 

 science throughout the English-speaking world. 



' There were two departments in which his best original 



