an account of the striking discoveries recently made in the
Old Red Sandstone of Scotland. M. Agassiz, who was present, pointed
out the peculiarities and the importance of these discoveries; and
it was on this occasion that he proposed to associate the name of
Mr. Miller with them, by the wonderful fossil, the _Pterichthys
Milleri_, specimens of which were then under the notice of the
section. Dr. Buckland, following M. Agassiz, said that "he had
never been so much astonished in his life by the powers of any man
as he had been by the geological descriptions of Mr. Miller. He
described these objects with a felicity which made him ashamed of
the comparative meagreness and poverty of his own descriptions in
the 'Bridgewater Treatise,' which had cost him hours and days of
labor. He (Dr. Buckland) _would give his left hand to possess such
powers of description as this man_; and if it pleased Providence to
spare his useful life, he, if any one, would certainly render the
science attractive and popular, and do equal service to theology
and geology." At the meetings of the Association, the language of
panegyric and of mutual compliment is not unfrequent, and does not
signify much; but these were spontaneous tributes of praise to one
comparatively unknown. The publication of the volume on the "Old
Red Sandstone," with the details of the author's discoveries and
researches, more than justified all the anticipations that had been
formed. It was received with highest approbation, not by men of
science alone, for the interest of its facts, but by men of
letters, for the beauty of its style. Sir Roderick Murchison, in
his address to the Geological Society that year, "hailed the
accession to their science of such a writer," and said that "his
work is, to a beginner, worth a thousand didactic treatises." The
_Edinburgh Review_ spoke of the book being "as admirable for the
clearness of its descriptions, and the sweetness of its
composition, as for the purity and gracefulness that pervade it."
The impression made by such a testimony was the more marked, that
the reviewer spoke of the writer as a fellow countryman,
"meritorious and self-taught."

In 1847 appeared "First Impressions of England and its People," the
result of a tour made during the previous year. Some pa