In science there are stars and stars, to borrow the adage of Thackeray upon men. There are stars that are fixed. In his own line of geology, as an inspirationist, we think his name will not soon pass away. There may be defects of knowledge, but there is no defect of spirit; and here we cannot do better than set down the opinion of his friend, Sir Archibald Geikie, who has a connection both with Miller and with Murchison through his occupancy of the Murchisonian Chair of Geology in the University of Edinburgh. Both Miller and Murchison came out of the Black Isle. In a communication to us of the date 22nd December 1895, he thus writes:-- 'Hugh Miller will always occupy a peculiar place in the history of geology, and in the ranks of geological literature. He was not in any sense a trained geologist. He lacked the habit of patient and detailed investigation in departments of the science that did not specially interest him, but which were essential as a basis of accurate induction and successful speculation. In all that relates to the stratigraphical sequence of the formations, for example, he accepted what had been done by others without any critical examination of it. Thus, in his own region--the north of Scotland--he believed that a girdle of Old Red Sandstone nearly encircles the older crystalline rocks of Ross and Sutherland--a view then generally adopted. Yet he had actually walked over ground where, with even an elementary knowledge of structural geology, he could have corrected the prevalent error. It is, of course, no reproach to him that he left matters as he found them in that respect; his genius did not find in such questions the appropriate field of its exertion. 'Nor though he occupied himself all through his life with fossils, can he be called a palæontologist. He had no education in comparative anatomy, and was thus incompetent to deal adequately as a naturalist with the organisms which he discovered. He was himself perfectly conscious of the limitations of his powers in this department, and thus wisely refrained from burdening the literature of science with descriptions and names which would have been revised, and perhaps entirely recast, by some subsequent more competent biologist.