he
unfortunately set himself the task of combating the theory of
evolution, which was fast gaining ground in his day, should not
blind us to the high value of his geological experiences. The
results of his observations provide some of the most cogent proofs
of the theory he disputed. Late in life Miller's mind gave way, and
he put an end to his own life on December 24, 1856.

_I.--A Stone-mason's Researches_

My advice to young working men desirous of bettering their
circumstances, and adding to the amount of their enjoyment, is to seek
happiness in study. Learn to make a right use of your eyes; the
commonest things are worth looking at--even stones, weeds, and the most
familiar animals. There are none of the intellectual or moral faculties,
the exercise of which does not lead to enjoyment; hence it is that
happiness bears so little reference to station.

Twenty years ago I made my first acquaintance with a life of labour and
restraint. I was but a slim, loose-jointed boy at the time, fond of the
pretty intangibilities of romance, and of dreaming when broad awake;
and, woful change! I was now going to work in a quarry. I was going to
exchange all my day-dreams for the kind of life in which men toil every
day that they may be enabled to eat, and eat every day that they may be
enabled to toil!

That first day was no very formidable beginning of the course of life I
had so much dreaded. To be sure, my hands were a little sore, and I felt
nearly as much fatigued as if I had been climbing among the rocks; but I
had wrought and been useful, and had yet enjoyed the day fully as much
as usual. I was as light of heart next morning as any of my
brother-workmen. That night, arising out of my employment, I found I had
food enough for thought without once thinking of the unhappiness of a
life of labour.

In the course of the day I picked up a nodular mass of blue limestone,
and laid it open by a stroke of the hammer. Wonderful to relate, it
contained inside a beautifully finished piece of sculpture, one of the
volutes, apparently, of an Ionic capital. Was there another such
curiosity in the whole world? I broke open a few other nodules of
similar appearance, and found that there might be. In one of these there
were what seemed to be scales of fishes and the impressions of a few
minute bivalves, prettily striated; in the centre of another there was
actually a piece of decayed wood.

Of all nat