274 HUGH MILLER 



these long vanished types of organic structure had 

 been fashioned. Huxley, who twenty years afterwards 

 had occasion to subject the Old Red Sandstone fishes 

 to critical study, and who brought to the inquiry 

 all the resources of modern biology, has left on record 

 the impression made on his mind by a minute revision 

 of Hugh Miller's work. ' The more I study the 

 fishes of the " Old Red," ' he remarks, c the more am 

 I struck with the patience and sagacity manifested in 

 Hugh Miller's researches, and by the natural insight 

 which in his case seems to have supplied the place of 

 special anatomical knowledge.' He refers to the 

 ' excellent restoration of Osteolepis? in which even 

 some of the minute peculiarities had not escaped 

 notice, and he declares that Hugh Miller had made 

 known almost the whole organisation of Dipterus, 

 and had thus anticipated the most important part of 

 Professor Pander's labours in the same field, the 

 distinguished Russian palaeontologist not having been 

 aware that the work had already been done in 

 Scotland. 



But it is not, in my opinion, by the extent or value 

 of his original contributions to geology that the import- 

 ance of Hugh Miller's scientific labours and writings 

 should be measured. Other men, who have left no 

 conspicuous mark on their time, have surpassed him 

 in these respects. What we more especially owe to 

 him is the awakening of a wide-spread interest in the 

 methods and results of scientific inquiry. More than 

 any other author of his day, he taught men to re- 

 cognise that beneath the technicalities and jargon of 

 the schools, that are too apt to conceal the meaning 



