42 Fishes. 



out what a quantity of spongy-looking but hard substances strewed 

 along the shore could possibly be. They were extremely numerous 

 in a little bend of the river, just below the town. I found out that 

 they were the dermal bones of alligators, which had either died of a 

 good old age — " exactis non infeliciter annis" — or had fallen victims 

 to the rifles of the militia and troops constantly passing up and down 

 the river in the steamers ; with these fellows a floating alligator being 

 a favourite mark. This slaughter must have very much thinned them, 

 in fact Black Creek, formerly the metropolis of alligators north of Lake 

 George, when I visited it, was nearly as free from them as from Indi- 

 ans, though only a few years before, its shores might probably have 

 boasted the biggest specimens of both species to be found in Florida. 

 I must just add in conclusion my opinion that the alligator has been 

 very ill used by the reports of travellers, and that far from being a fe- 

 rocious beast, where man is concerned, he is mighty civil, generally 

 dropping quietly into the water at the sight of human beings, to avoid 

 alarming them by his ugly visage and gigantic carcass ; or it may be 

 from having learned by experience that in Florida the crack of a rifle 

 is no rare accompaniment to the splash of an oar. — Edward Douhle- 

 day ; 10, Newington Cresceni, October 14, 1812. 



Notice of The Old Red Sandstone: * 



" Few facts are more remarkable in the history of the progress of human discovery 

 than that it should have been reserved almost entirely for the researches of the present 

 generation to arrive at any certain knowledge of the existence of the numerous ex- 

 tinct races of animals, which occupied the surface of our planet in ages preceding the 

 creation of man." — Buckland's Bridgwater Treatise, i. 108. 



Dk. Buckland, addressing the British Association, said that he had 

 never been so much astonished by the powers of any man, as when 

 perusing the geological descriptions of Mr. Miller, as published in 

 the Witness newspaper : that wonderful man described these objects 

 with a felicity which made the Doctor ashamed of the comparative 

 meagerness and poverty of his own descriptions : he would give his 

 left hand to possess such powers of description. Mr. Murchison also 

 remarked that he had seen some of Mr. Miller's papers on Geology, 

 written in a style so beautiful and poetical, as to throw plain geolo- 

 gists like himself into the shade. Praise from such men precludes 



* The Old Red Sandstone ; or Neiv Walks in an Old Field. By Hugh Miller. 

 Edinburgh : John Johnstone. London : R. Groombridgc. 1842. (2nd edition). 



