Smith, the father of English Geology, loved to remark that he had been born upon the Oolite—the formation whose various deposits he was the first to distinguish and describe, and from which, as from the meridian line of the geographer, the geological scale has been graduated on both sides. I have thought of the circumstance when, on visiting in my native district the birthplace of the author of the Silurian System, I found it situated among the more ancient fossiliferous rocks of the north of Scotland—the Lower Formation of the Old Red Sandstone spreading out beneath and around it, and the first-formed deposit of the system, the Great Conglomerate, rising high on the neighboring hills. It is unquestionably no slight advantage to be placed, at that early stage of life, when the mind collects its facts with greatest avidity, and the curiosity is most active, in localities where there is much to attract observation that has escaped the notice of others. Like the gentleman whom I have now the honor of addressing, I too was born on the Old Red Sandstone, and first broke ground as an inquirer into geological fact in a formation scarce at all known to the geologist, and in which there still remains much for future discoverers to examine and describe. Hence an acquaintance, I am afraid all too slight, with phenomena which, if intrinsically of interest, may be found to have also the interest of novelty to recommend them, and with organisms which, though among the most ancient of things in their relation to the world's history, will be pronounced new by the geological reader in their relation to human knowledge. Hence, too, my present opportunity of subscribing myself, as the writer of a volume on the Old Red Sandstone,
Honored Sir,
With sincere gratitude and respect,
Your obedient humble Servant,
HUGH MILLER.
Edinburgh, May 1, 1841.
[PREFACE.]
Nearly one third of the present volume appeared a few months ago in the form of a series of sketches in the Witness newspaper. A portion of the first chapter was submitted to the public a year or two earlier, in Chambers's Edinburgh Journal. The rest, amounting to about two thirds of the whole, appears for the first time.
Every such work has its defects. The faults of the present volume—faults all too obvious, I am afraid—would have been probably fewer had the writer enjoyed greater leisure. Some of them, however, seem scarce separable from the nature of the subject: there are others for which, from their opposite character, I shall have to apologize in turn to opposite classes of readers. My facts would, in most instances, have lain closer had I written for geologists exclusively, and there would have been less reference to familiar phenomena. And had I written for only general readers, my descriptions of hitherto undescribed organisms, and the deposits of little-known localities, would have occupied fewer pages, and would have been thrown off with, perhaps, less regard to minute detail than to pictorial effect. May I crave, while addressing myself, now to the one class, and now to the other, the alternate forbearance of each?
Such is the state of progression in geological science, that the geologist who stands still for but a very little, must be content to find himself left behind. Nay, so rapid is the progress, that scarce a geological work passes through the press in which some of the statements of the earlier pages have not to be modified, restricted, or extended in the concluding ones. The present volume shares, in this respect, in what seems the common lot. In describing the Coccosteus, the reader will find it stated that the creature, unlike its contemporary the Pterichthys, was unfurnished with arms. Ere arriving at such a conclusion, I had carefully examined at least a hundred different Coccostei; but the positive evidence of one specimen outweighs the negative evidence of a hundred; and I have just learned from a friend in the north, (Mr. Patrick Duff, of Elgin,) that a Coccosteus lately found at Lethen-bar, and now in the possession of Lady Gordon Gumming, of Altyre, is furnished with what seem uncouth, paddle-shaped arms, that project from the head.[A] All that I have given of the creature, however, will be found true to the actual type; and that parts should have been omitted will surprise no one who remembers that many hundred belemnites had been figured and described ere a specimen turned up in which the horny prolongation, with its enclosed ink-bag, was found attached to the calcareous spindle; and that even yet, after many thousand trilobites have been carefully examined, it remains a question with the oryctologist, whether this crustacean of the earliest periods was furnished with legs, or creeped on an abdominal foot, like the snail.
[A] As these paddle-shaped arms have not been introduced by Agassiz into his restoration of the Coccosteus, their existence, at least as arms, must still be regarded as problematical. There can be no doubt, however, that they existed as plates of very peculiar form, and greatly resembling paddles, and that they served in the economy of the animal some still unaccounted for purpose.