苏格兰地质学家赫富密勒（Hugh Miller，1802-1856），乃是一位自学成名的地质学家、作家、民俗研究学者、福音派基督徒；他从采石出身；成为十九世纪第一流的地质学家。就其文笔之生动，著述之丰富而言，当时几乎没有一人可望其项背，尤以他所著的《红沙岩》(Old Red Sandstone)一书，曾经风行全球，脍炙人口，其中有几段说：

　　“我对青年人的忠告，非常简单，如果要追求一生的幸福，不要贪爱无聊的享乐，而应以读书为乐事，保持清明的良知，研究自然的事物，阅读有益的书籍。圣经里面，比一切怀疑不信的著作，含有更正确的哲理，人类如果离开了圣经，必然变成最凄惨的动物。”

　　“进化论者，以为鱼类可以变成爬行动物；爬行动物，可以变为哺乳动物；但是地质学的事实证明，这种进化，乃是虚荒的臆想。万物各从其类，进化论，不能代替上帝观；变形论，不能代替创造说……假如进化论是正确的话，则人类将来必要辞去他‘万物之灵’的光荣地位，让另外一处更聪明、更高贵动物来代替人的地位。”


Life and work
生平及工作

Born in Cromarty, he was educated in a parish school where he reportedly showed a love of reading. At 17 he was apprenticed to a stonemason, and his work in quarries, together with walks along the local shoreline, led him to the study of geology. In 1829 he published a volume of poems, and soon afterwards became involved in political and religious controversies, first connected to the Reform Bill, and then with the division in the Church of Scotland which led to the Disruption of 1843.[2]
赫富密勒生于克罗默蒂，在教会学校接受教育， 在那里他以喜爱阅读而闻名。在他17岁时在一位石匠家里做学徒，


In 1834 he became accountant in one of the local banks, and in the next year brought out his Scenes and Legends in the North of Scotland. In 1840 the popular party in the Church, with which he had been associated, started a newspaper, the Witness, and Miller was called to be editor in Edinburgh, a position which he retained till the end of his life.

Among his geological works are The Old Red Sandstone (1841), Footprints of the Creator (1850), The Testimony of the Rocks (1856), Sketch-book of Popular Geology. Of these books, perhaps The Old Red Sandstone was the best-known. The Old Red Sandstone is still a term used to collectively describe sedimentary rocks deposited as a result of the Caledonian orogeny in the late Silurian, Devonian and earliest part of the Carboniferous period.

Miller held that the Earth was of great age, and that it had been inhabited by many species which had come into being and gone extinct, and that these species were homologous; although that species were progressing with time. He denied the Epicurean theory that new species occasionally budded from the soil, and the Lamarckian theory of development of species, as lacking evidence. He argued that all this showed the direct action of a benevolent Creator, as attested in the Bible - the similarities of species are manifestations of types in the Divine Mind; he accepted the view of Thomas Chalmers that Genesis begins with an account of geological periods, and does not mean that each of them is a day; Noah's Flood was a limited subsidence of the Middle East. Geology, to Miller, offers a better version of the argument from design than William Paley could provide, and answers the objections of skeptics, by showing that living species did not arise by chance or by impersonal law.[3]
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Illness and death

For most of 1856, Miller suffered severe headaches and the most probable diagnosis is of psychotic depression. Victorian-era medicine did not help. He feared that he might harm his wife or children because of persecutory delusions. Miller committed suicide on the night he had finished checking printers' proofs for his book on Scottish fossil plants and vertebrates, The Testimony of the Rocks. Before his death, he wrote a poem called Strange but True[4]

A shocked Western world mourned him, and his funeral procession was among the largest in the memory of Edinburgh residents.
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Legacy

Miller's death was very tragic, and his life brief, but he left a heritage of new discoveries of several Silurian sea scorpions (the eurypterid genus Hughmilleria was named in his honor), and many Devonian fishes, including several placoderms (the arthrodire Millerosteus also honored him), intriguingly described in his popular books. Though he had no academic credentials, he is today considered one of Scotland's premier paleontologists.

His home in Cromarty is open as a geological museum, with specimens collected in the immediate area; a week-end event at the site in 2008 was part of celebrations marking the bicentenary of the Geological Society of London.[5] Miller was mentioned in the song "Idea Track" by Scottish band Idlewild.

There is a bust of Hugh Miller in the Hall of Heroes at the Wallace Monument in Stirling.[6] His birthplace in Cromarty is open to the public.[7]
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Main works

The Cruise of the Betsey - title page (1858)
Scenes and legends of the north of Scotland : or, The traditional history of Cromarty (1834)
The old red sandstone : or, New walks in an old field (1841)
First impressions of England and its people (1847)
The foot-prints of the Creator: or, The Asterolepis of Stromness (1849)
My schools and schoolmasters; or, The story of my education (1854)
The cruise of the Betsey : or, a summer ramble among the fossiliferous deposits of the Hebrides ; with Rambles of a geologist ; or, Ten thousand miles over the fossiliferous deposits of Scotland (1857)
The testimony of the rocks; or, Geology in its bearings on the two theologies, natural and revealed (1857)
The old red sandstone; or, New walks in an old field. To which is appended a series of geological papers, read before the Royal Physical Society of Edinburgh (1858)
Sketch-book of popular geology being a series of lectures delivered before the Philosophical Institution of Edinburgh (1859)
Popular geology: a series of lectures read before the Philosophical Institution of Edinburgh, with Descriptive sketches from a geologist's portfolio (1859)
The headship of Christ and The rights of the Christian people (1860)
Tales and sketches (1862)
Edinburgh and its neighbourhood, geological and historical; with the geology of the Bass rock (1863)
Essays, historical and biographical, political, social, literary and scientific (1865)
Sketch-book of popular geology (1869)
Hugh Miller's memoir : from stonemason to geologist by Hugh Miller (1995)
Hugh Miller and the controversies of Victorian science (1996)