Hugh Miller

Hugh Miller (1802 to 1856) was a Scottish geologist, writer and folklorist, born in Cromarty. His father, a shipmaster, drowned in 1807, and at seventeen Miller was apprenticed to a stonemason; his work in quarries and his walks along the shore led him to the study of geology. He worked as a bank accountant, wrote poems and Scenes and Legends in the North of Scotland, and from 1840 edited the newspaper the Witness in Edinburgh, an influential voice in the early Free Church. His geological books include The Old Red Sandstone of 1841, Footprints of the Creator of 1850 and The Testimony of the Rocks of 1857. He held that the Earth was very old and that many species had come and gone, but rejected descent of later species from earlier ones.