44 Fishes. 



tice of the treasures they contain; — let us examine their Zoology. 

 Prior to the exertions of Mr. Miller, the old red sandstone was consi- 

 dered a poor field for the palaeontologist: one author in particular has 

 asserted that " the old red sandstone has hitherto been considered as 

 remarkably baiTen in fossils ; " — let us hear Mr. Miller's opinion in 

 reply. 



" My first statement regarding it must he much the reverse of the borrowed one 

 with which this chapter begins. The fossils are remarkably numerous^ and in a state 

 of high preservation. I have a hundred solid proofs by which to establish the truth of 

 the assertion, within less than a yard of me. Half my closet walls are covered with 

 the peculiar fossils of the Lower Old Red Sandstone ; and certainly a stranger assem- 

 blage of forms have rarely been grouped together; — creatures whose very type is lost, 

 — fantastic and uncouth, and which puzzle the naturalist to assign them even their 

 class; — boat-like animals, furnished with oars and a rudder; — fish plated over, like the 

 tortoise, above and below, with a strong aimour of bone, and furnished with but one 

 solitary rudder-like fin ; — other fish, less equivocal in their form, but with the mem- 

 branes of their fins thickly covered with scales; — creatures bristling over with thorns; 

 others glistening in an enamelled coat, as if beautifully japanned, — the tail, in every 

 instance among the less equivocal shapes, formed not equally, as in existing fish, on 

 each side the central vertebral bone, but chiefly on the lower side, — the bone sending 

 out its diminished vertebrae to the extreme termination of the fin. All the forms tes- 

 tify of a remote antiquity, — of a period whose " fashions have passed away." The fi- 

 gures on a Chinese vase or an Egyptian obelisk are scarce more unlike what now exists 

 in nature, than the fossils of the Lower Old Red Sandstone." — p. 57. 



From this we pass on to the Lamarckian hypothesis of progressive 

 development. Mr. Miller's arguments on this subject are full of wit 

 and point, yet, except as affording him an opportunity of exhibiting 

 his powers, they must be considered as rather amusing than instruc- 

 tive, for in this age of enquiry there are no Lamarckians : the hypo- 

 thesis is a non-entity, — a spirit known only to those by whom it is 

 conjured up for the express purpose of being submitted to a formal 

 exorcism : each author who mentions it is himself its creator : like 

 the Pope or Guy Fawkes of the 5th of November, it is a being of straw 

 invested with imaginary teiTors for the purpose of enhancing the plea- 

 sure and the merit of its total annihilation. However, Mr. Miller shall 

 speak for himself. 



" Mr. Lyell's brilliant and popular work, ' The Principles of Geology,* must have 

 introduced to the knowledge of most of my readers the strange theories of Lamarck. 

 The ingenious foreigner, on the strength of a few striking facts, which prove that, to 

 a certain extent, the instincts of species may be improved and heightened, and their 

 forms changed from a lower to a higher degree of adaptation to their circumstances, 

 has concluded that there is a natural progress from the inferior orders of beings towards 

 the superioi^, and that the offspring of creatures low in the scale in the present time, may 



