CHAP. xiv. MARINE SHELLS. 207 



only a stride across. Shortly after I entered the Bower- 

 madden road from Castletown to Wick. I went on to 

 Castletown, and saw that there was a continuing hollow 

 by Duran Loch on to the very south corner of Dunnet 

 Bay. 



" Eaise the sea a hundred feet at Dunnet Bay and a 

 hundred feet at Sinclair Bay, and, in my opinion, their 

 waters would unite. The evidence of marine shells is 

 also nearly continuous from Dunbeath to Thurso. The 

 evidence of marine shells is also continuous from Fres- 

 wick up as far as Brabster mire. I have no doubt that 

 during the boulder clay epoch the whole of Caithness 

 was under the sea." 



Dick continues to send Hugh Miller various fossils 

 found during his journeys. On the 22d of March he 

 sends a fish jaw (of the Asterolepis), with an excellent 

 drawing of it, carefully done. The drawing afterwards 

 appeared in Hugh Miller's Footprints of the Creator. 

 Three months later Dick tells him that he has found 

 a hyoid bone of the Diplopterus, "another victory 

 over the unknown." He made numerous excursions for 

 the purpose of enabling Miller to illustrate the Pleisto- 

 cene formation. He went to Harpsdale in the south, to 

 Freswick in the east (starting at midnight), and to Ben 

 Shurery in the west. The Ben consists of granite and 

 granitic gneiss, but near the top of the hill he found two 

 boulders of red conglomerate, of vast size. 



" No Oolitic or Liassic strata, in my opinion, exist ia 

 Caithness, so you must account for the great abundance 

 of fragmentary strangers in some other manner. How 



