CHAPTER IX. 

 GEOLOGY DISCOVERY OF A HOLOPTYCHIUS. 



ROBERT DICK had now been engaged for many years in 

 studying the wonderful aspects of Nature in the North. 

 Caithness was not too wild or dreary for him. The 

 shells on the sea-shore, the grasses along the river-sides, 

 the mosses growing on the boulders, the ferns abounding 

 in Dunnet cliffs, were all full of interest. And now he 

 proceeded to probe the ground under his feet. 



He had long had a taste for geology. While gather- 

 ing his botanical specimens he had often found fossil 

 fishes in the slaty rocks. He first observed them in 

 1835, a few years after he had settled at Thurso. At 

 first they excited his wonder ; then his surprise, for dis- 

 tinguished geologists had asserted that no fossil remains 

 were to be found in the Scotch Highlands.* But here they 

 were under his own eyes ! Why should he not explore 



* The Rev. W. D. Conybeare and William Phillips, Esq., in their 

 Outlines of the Geology of England and Wales (1822), said, "A cir- 

 cumstance cannot fail to have struck the observer during the course of 

 his researches, which opens to his view a far more extensive and 

 interesting field of his inquiry with regard to the relations of these 

 rocks to the general revolutions of nature ; for he will have found in 

 many of these beds spoils of the vegetable and animal kingdom im- 

 bedded, particularly the remains of marine zoophytes and shells, often 



