After having spent nearly fifteen years in the profession of a
stone-mason, Mr. Miller was promoted to a position more suited to his
genius. When a bank was established in his native town of Cromarty, he
received the appointment of accountant, and he was thus employed, for
five years, in keeping ledgers and discounting bills. When the contest in
the Church of Scotland had come to a close, by the decision of the House
of Lords in the Auchterurder Case, Mr. Miller’s celebrated letter to Lord
Brougham attracted the particular attention of the party which was about
to leave the Establishment, and he was selected as the most competent
person to conduct the _Witness_ newspaper, the principal metropolitan
organ of the Free Church. The great success which this journal has
met with is owing, doubtless, to the fine articles, political,
ecclesiastical, and geological, which Mr. Miller has written for it. In
the few leisure hours which so engrossing an occupation has allowed him
to enjoy, he has devoted himself to the ardent prosecution of scientific
inquiries; and we trust the time is not far distant when the liberality
of his country, to which he has done so much honor, will allow him to
give his whole time to the prosecution of science.
Geologists of high character had believed that the Old Red Sandstone
was defective in organic remains; and it was not till after ten years’
acquaintance with it that Mr. Miller discovered it to be _richly
fossiliferous_. The labors of other ten years were required to assign to
its fossils their exact place in the scale.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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