The late Hu9:h Miller. 69 



'to 



■counties, anxious that his statements should rest as far as possi- 

 1316 upon the authority of his own personal investigation. His 

 knowledge of the geology of the country was thus far more exten- 

 sive than was generally supposed. We may refer particularly to 

 that branch of it on which he bestowed the unremitted attention 

 -of his closing years — the palseontological history of the glacial 

 beds — that strange and as yet almost unknown period that usher- 

 ed in the existing creation. He studied it minutely along the 

 ■shores of the Moray Firth, on the east coast of Scotland, along 

 the shores of Fife and the Lothians, and on the coast of Ayrshire 

 and the Firth of Clyde. This last summer he made a tour through 

 the centre of the island, and obtained boreal shells at Buchlyvie 

 in Stirlingshire — the omphalos of Scotland. The -importance of 

 this discovery, in connection with those he had previously made 

 in following the same chain of evidence can only be appreciated 

 by those who have paid some attention to geology. We may state 

 briefly that it proves the central area of Scotland to have been 

 submerged beneath an icy sea, and icebergs to have grated along 

 over what is now the busy valley of the Forth and Clyde, while 

 the waters were tenanted by shells at present found only in the 

 Northern Ocean. A large part of his work is written, though it is 

 to be feared that much knowledge, amassed in the course of its pre- 

 paration, has perished with him. In particular, there were whole 

 sections of his museum understood only by himself. Every little 

 fragment had its story, and contributed its quota of evidence to 

 the truth of his descriptions. There is perhaps but another mind 

 in Britain, — that of Sif Philip Egerton, — that can catch up the 

 thread, and read oiF, though with difficulty, the meaning of those 

 carefully arranged fragments. Yet, even with such aid, much must 

 long, if not for ever, remain dark and obscure. The work on 

 which he was more immediately engaged at the time of his death 

 w^as partly theological, partly scientific. It was to embrace the 

 substance of some lectures lately delivered, and a paper read last 

 year before the British Association at Glasgow, on the fossil plants 

 collected by himself from the Olite and Old Red Sandstone of Scot- 

 land. It was likcAvise to contain the figures of some thirty or for- 

 ty hitherto undescribed species of vegetables. We hope that, as 

 it was all but ready for publication, it may yet be given to the 

 world," 



