HUGH MILLER (1802-1856), SCOTTISH GEOLOGIST AND ADVENTURE WRITER

One of sixteen marble busts surrounding the Wallace Sword in the Hall of Heroes at the Wallace Monument near Stirling is the likeness of a famous geologist. It is not Hutton, Murchison, nor Lyell...it is a bust of Hugh Miller. Scotland bestows profound reverence to the memory of Hugh Miller, a man who brought observations and interpretations from geologic explorations to the common man through his popular and prolific writings in newspaper serials and several books. He wrote, "Learn to make a right use of your eyes." Miller was among the first popular geology writers, who promoted the nascent field, giving it credibility. Many 19th and early 20th Century biographies recount Miller's work. William Mackay Mackenzie, writing in 1905, regarded him as "...a genius of humble origin..."

Miller was born on the Old Red Sandstone in Cromarty on the Black Isle. His birthplace and childhood home houses the Hugh Miller Museum. Orphaned at age five, when his ship-captain father was lost at sea, Miller was raised by his mother and educated by his uncles. At seventeen, he apprenticed as a stonemason, and it was in the rocks of the quarries, and outcrops between Cromarty and the Sutors, twin buttresses that guard the entrance to Cromarty Firth, where Miller became a geologist, exploring caves and collecting fossil fish from the Devonian and ammonites from Jurassic exposures near Eathie. He wrote, "Who, after even a few hours in such a school, could avoid becoming a geologist." He eventually traveled as a journeyman to quarries near Edinburgh, where he developed "stonecutter's disease," silicosis. He returned to Cromarty, briefly pursued a career in accountancy for a bank, married, and ultimately moved to Edinburgh, where he became editor and chief writer for The Witness.

Like many of his pre-Darwinian contemporaries, Hugh Miller was a man of faith, who reconciled evidence for deep time with the notions and culture of Victorian Britain as "earlier creations." Miller supported the rights of common folk and became a central character in a historic rift in the Church of Scotland. Miller's geologic writing soothed tensions that developed between "anti-geology" religious segments and scientists. His greatest contribution, his passion for geology, was expressed in his own words, "Let me qualify myself to be an interpreter between nature and the public."