192 Obifaary — Dr. Samuel A. Miller, 



SAMUEL A. MILLER. 



Born August 28, 1837. Died December 18, 1897. 



This well-known American writer, who was born at Coolville, 

 Athens Co., 0., Aug. 28, 1837, and died at Cincinnati, 0., Dec. 18, 

 1897, in his Gist year, was a man, as was said in his funeral oration, 

 " singularly self-poised and self-centered," and no admirer of 

 British paleeontologists, nor, for the matter of that, a follower of 

 any leaders in science, in his own country or elsewhere. Yet 

 paleeontologists of every land owe him their thanks for the useful 

 work that will long keep his name in memory — " North American 

 Geology and Palgeontology," that invaluable guide to the scattered 

 literature on the fossils of North America, and not least to the 

 prolific labours of Mr. Miller himself. Scientific workers, too, may, 

 not without advantage to themselves, respect a man who recked 

 naught of authority, but sought out for himself that which he 

 believed to be good. In these days of milk-and-water compliment 

 and pusillanimous log-rolling, it is bracing for a writer who thinks 

 no little of his work to be told suddenly in broad American that he 

 is a " shallow pretender, overgrown with self-conceit." Mr. Miller's 

 flat contradictions were, moreover, not to be ignored, for they were 

 based on actual observation, usually made on the fine specimens 

 of his own large collection. Had Mr. Miller not been a busy 

 lawyer, one, too, with a high reputation among his colleagues, an 

 active citizen and politician, and for a while the editor of a weekly 

 paper, he would doubtless have found time to obtain that wider 

 knowledge and deeper grounding in the natural sciences, the want 

 of which did so much to cause his work to be regarded with 

 suspicion and disfavour even in cases where it was deserving of 

 better treatment. What Mr. Miller lacked in technical training, 

 he made up by his energy. He was one of the founders of the 

 Cincinnati Society of Natural History, and for several years 

 edited the Journal of that body ; also during 1874-5 he edited 

 and published the CiucinnaU Quarterly Journal of Science. He 

 undertook palaeontological work for the States of Ohio, Indiana, 

 Missouri, Illinois, and Wisconsin. His great catalogue of North 

 American fossils underwent evolution through three very different 

 editions, and continued to be brought up to date by appendices. 

 We learn that he had in preparation a monograph on the 

 Cephalopoda, the manuscript of which is left in a nearly completed 

 state. The Ohio University, of which he was a graduate, conferred 

 upon him in 1893 the degree of Ph.D. 



Sturdy, both morally and physically, with a pronounced in- 

 dividuality reflected in his strongly marked face and determined 

 mouth, Samuel A. Miller was not a man to pass through or to 

 quit this world unnoticed. His grave is appropriately marked by 

 a rough log of fossil wood from Arizona on a massive pedestal of 

 New Hampshire granite. F. A. B. 



