An Autobiography - 1859 Author:Hugh Miller Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER lV. "Strange marble stones, here larger and there leal, Aud of full vurious forma, which still increase ln height and built by a continual drop, Which... more » upon each distilling from the top, And falling still exactly on the crown. There break theinseiviw to mists, which, trickling down, Crust into stone, and tbut with leisure) swell The sides, and aull advance the miracle." Jinm.ru Cottom. It is low water in the Frith of Cromarty during stream tides, between six and seven o'clock in the evening; and my Uncle Sandy, in returning from his work at the close of the day, used not unfrequently, when, according to the phrase of the place, " there was a tide in the water," to strike down the hillside, and spend a quiet hour in the ebb. I delighted to accompany him on these occasions. There are Professors of Natural History that know less of living nature than was known by Uncle Sandy; and I deemed it no small matter to have all the various productions of the sea with which he was acquainted pointed out to me in these walks, and to be put in possession of his many curious aneedotes regarding them. He was a skilful crab and lobster fisher, and knew every hole and crannie, along several miles of rocky shore, in which the creatures were accustomed to shelter, with not a few of their own peculiarities of character. Contrary to the view taken by some of our naturalists, Mich as Agassiz, who held that the crab—=-a genus comparatively recent in its appearance in creation—is less embryotic in its character, and higher in its standing, than the more ancient lobster, my uncle regarded the lobster as a more intelligent animal than the crab. The hole in which the lobster lodges has almost always two open ings, he has said, through one of which it sometimes contrives to escape when ...« less