REVIEWS. 
123 
him to adopt a life of labour. We doubt that out of Scotland a second 
Hugh Miller could be found; and, we feel assured, the history of such a 
mind cannot fail to exercise an influence for good on all who read it. The 
husband of one of our author’s maternal aunts was a mason ; and with him 
he agreed to serve a period of three years as apprentice. Soon after he 
became acquainted with the “ Easie Lias,” a deposit rich in organism, 
which are thus described:— 
“These Liasic beds, with their separating bands, are a sort of boarded books ; 
for as a series of volumes reclining against a granite pedestal in the geologic 
library of nature, I used to find pleasure in regarding them. The limestone bands, 
elaborately marbled with lignite, ichthyolite, and shell, form the stiff boarding ; the 
pasteboard-like laminse between—tens and hundreds of thousands in number in 
even the slimmer volumes—compose the closely-written leaves. I say closely 
written, for never yet did signs or characters lie closer on page or scroll than do 
the organisms of the Lias on the surface of these leaf-like laminas. I can scarce 
hope to communicate to the reader, after the lapse of so many years, an adequate 
idea of the feeling of wonder which the marvels of this deposit excited in my mind, 
wholly new as they were to me at the time. Even the fairy lore of my first-formed 
library—that of the birchen-box—had impressed me less. The general tone of the 
colouring of these written leaves, though dimmed by the action of untold centuries, 
is still very striking. The ground is invariably of a deep, neutral gray, verging on 
black; while the flattened organisms, which present about the same degree of 
relief as one sees in the figures of an embossed card, contrast with it in tints that 
vary from opaque to silvery white, and from pale yellow to an umbry or chestnut 
brown. Groupes of ammonites appear as if drawn in white chalk ; clusters of a 
minute undescribed bivalve are still plated with thin films of the silvery nacre ; the 
mytilicese usually bear a warm tint of yellowish brown, and must have been bril¬ 
liant shells in their day; gryphites and oysters are always of a dark gray, and 
plagiostomge ordinarily of a blueish or neutral tint. On some of the leaves curious 
pieces of incident seem recorded. We see fleets of minute terebratulae, that ap¬ 
pear to have been covered up by some sudden deposit from above when riding at 
their anchors ; and whole argosies of ammonites, that seem to have been wrecked 
at once by some untoward accident, and sent crushed and dead to the bottom. 
Assemblages of bright black plates, that shine like pieces of Japan work, with 
numerous parallelogramical scales bristling with nail-like points, indicate where 
some armed fish of the old ganoid order lay down and died ; and groups of belem- 
nites, that lie like heaps of boarding pikes thrown carelessly on a vessel’s deck on 
the surrender of the crew, tell where sculls of cuttle-fishes of the ancient type had 
ceased to trouble the waters. I need scarce add, that these spear-like belemnites 
formed the supposed thunderbolts of the deposit. Lying athwart, some of the 
pages thus strangely inscribed, we occasionally find, like the dark hawthorn leaf in 
Bewick’s well-known vignette, slim-shaped leaves coloured in deep umber ; and 
branches of extinct pines, and fragments of strangely-fashioned ferns, form their 
more ordinary garnishing. Page after page, for tens and hundreds of feet together, 
repeats the same wonderful story. The great Alexandrian Library, with its tomes of 
ancient literature, the accumulation of long ages, was but a meagre collection—not 
less puny in bulk than recent in date—compared with this marvellous library of the 
Scotch Lias.” 
We sincerely regret that we cannot transfer to our pages more of Mr. 
Miller’s history—how the working mason became accountant at a.bank— 
married—became editor of the “ Witness” newspaper, which his zeal and 
energy quickly raised to a high standing. Every page of his narrative 
abounds in description, valuable to the naturalist, proceeding, as they do, 
