Jail. 2, 1879] 



NATURE 



191 



ethnographically it is a portion of the northern low- 

 lands peopled by Scandinavian colonists. Again, while 

 it is true that the rocks of the Scotch Highlands 

 are with rare exceptions unfossiliferous, no geologist for 

 half a century or more has said that those of Caithness 

 are so also. Dr. Smiles, in repeating, amplifies his asser- 

 tion (p. 245) and blunders still more ; for this time he 

 makes Dean Conybeare the author of the astounding 

 statement that " the rocks of Scotland :\xq unfossiliferous I '' 

 and drags in Sir Roderick Murchison, "who took the 

 statement on trust," and "many writers" as propagating 

 the delusion. A third time he refers to the subject, when 

 (p. 238) he says " Robert Dick discovered numerous 

 remains of fossil fishes in Caithness where distinguished 

 geologists had stated that no fossil fishes were to be 

 found.'' How he could print these sentences in the 

 same volume with the letter from Murchison given on 

 p. 275, it is hard to understand. In that letter Murchison 

 speaks of himself as an old geologist who had written 

 upon the Caithness fishes thirty-two years before. In 

 truth, that geologist and his companion Sedg\vick had 

 found abundant fossil fishes in Caithness and had pub- 

 lished an account with drawings of some of them, while 

 Dick was still an apprentice carrying bread among the 

 villages of the Ochils. No fact in Scottish geology was 

 more familiar than that the flagstones of Caithness 

 abounded in fossil fishes. That Dick should have been 

 filled with surprise when he found them, only shows that 

 he had not had opportunities of learning what had already 

 been done in the district. 



Again, Dr. Smiles refers to a remark of Sir Charles 

 Lyell's that "very few organic remains had been found in 

 the boulder-clay and especially in the till, throughout 

 Scotland." It would seem as if he were quoting from a 

 letter of Dick to Hugh J^Iiller ; for a passage from this 

 letter follows, showing that the writer had found fossils in 

 the boulder-clay almost in every place where he had 

 looked for them. And the reader is left lo draw the 

 inference that Dick in testing LyeU's statement by an 

 appeal to nature, had found it to be incorrect. But it 

 remains absolutely true to this hour. The boulder-clay, 

 as a whole, is singularly barren of organic remains. In 

 one or two exceptional places, and Caithness is one of 

 them, it is full of fragmentary marine shells. Dick's 

 observations were quite accurate ; but it was not necessary 

 to enhance their importance by showing that they con- 

 tradicted the published statements of so distinguished 

 a writer as Sir Charles Lyell. 



But the most serious defect of all is one with which it is 

 somewhat difficult to deal. Ever>- reader of the book 

 will recognise that its preparation has been a labour of 

 love. Dr. Smiles has wandered over all the scenes of 

 Dick's rambles, has tried to realise as vividly as possible 

 the circumstances and surroundings of the enthusiast's 

 life, has recognised his devotion to the acquisition of 

 knowledge, and has written with the most heartfelt 

 sympathy with Dick's love of nature and the struggles 

 and trials of his position. And yet one feels that into 

 the spirit of the researches which formed the bright side 

 of Dick's lonely life, which cheered him and furnished 

 him with mental food 'and recreation from beginning to 

 end, the writer of the Life hardly enters at all. It was 

 more than a mere love of nature which carried Dick so 



buoyantly through his monotonous drudgery ; more than 

 the mere pleasure of finding flower, or insect, or fossil in its 

 native habitat, and bringing it home to enrich his collec- 

 tion. We have glimpses of this in his graphic letters, 

 and a reader who knows something of the contemporary 

 history of scientific progress, can read between the lines 

 of these letters and find in them an interest tenfold 

 greater than they can possibly have without this infor- 

 mation. The want of such assistance to an ordinary- 

 reader must make the letters somewhat monotonous, 

 and give the' impression that the book is unnecessarily 

 long. When he reads, for example, Dick's account of 

 his numerous and laborious traverses of Caithness in 

 search of sections of boulder-clay, he will naturally ask 

 the object of these toilsome journeys, what was to be 

 gained from them, and what in actual fact was gained. 

 It would have increased his appreciation of these labours 

 to have learnt something of the problem to the solution 

 of which Dick set himself, and he would have been the 

 better able to realise the eager enthusiasm which led that 

 votary of nature to cross the county on foot at night to 

 get to his boulder-clay scars by daybreak. It would have 

 heightened the readers respect for the subject of the 

 biography to have been shown how, if the results briefly 

 sketched in the letters now published, had been given 

 in detail to the world a quarter of a century ago, they 

 might have placed the name of Robert Dick among the 

 pioneers of glacial geolog)-. 



But of all this we learn nothing from the memoir. Dr. 

 Smiles sums up Dick's character and points the moral 

 to be drawn from the story of his life. But what was the 

 outcome of these long years of indefatigable labour ? 

 Apart from the man himself, what did his work advantage 

 the world ? It is, indeed, a worthy thing to have lived a 

 life that may serve as an ensample and encouragement 

 to after generations. Dick did that nobly. But he did 

 more. He felt that he had "done the State some ser- 

 vice." Though he never published his knowledge he 

 worked incessantly and freely communicated his stores of 

 information to others. Much of thr.t knowledge died 

 with him. Yet from his letters, his scientific collections, 

 the published references to the assistance freely given 

 by him to fellow-workers in science, and the recollections 

 of his contemporaries, it might have been possible to have 

 given at least an outline of what he had achieved. Such 

 a sketch would have been a fitting tribute to his memory, 

 a recognition of the meaning and value of those long years 

 of solitary toil. 



In an interesting and genially written episode. Dr. 

 Smiles sketches the career of another, but still living 

 enthusiast in natural history- — Charles W. Peach, who 

 was one of Dick's most intimate friends, worked with 

 him among the Old Red Sandstone fossils, corresponded, 

 argued, battled with him over their respective opinions. 

 But here again the writer's general sympathy with a 

 heroic struggle for the acquisition of knowledge betrays 

 no special interest in or acquaintance with the life-work 

 of his hero. Unwittingly, therefore, he is led to do but 

 scant justice to his subject. From the allusions, for 

 example, in Dick's letters and elsewhere, to a discussion 

 between that dogmatic observer and Mr. Peach regard- 

 ing fossil wood, no reader could guess what a momentous 

 point in the histor}- of the Old Red Sandstone of Caiih- 



