CHAP. xv. CORRESPONDENCE WITH MILLER. 217 



ganoids, to which I can only refer the members of the 

 Society as worthy of their examination. They are in 

 part the fruits of a leisure fortnight spent this autumn 

 among the rocks of Thurso ; but in still greater part I 

 owe them to the kindness of my indefatigable friend 

 Mr. Robert Dick, of whom I may well say that lie, has 

 robbed himself to do me service" 



The same lecture is full of the obligations which he 

 owed to Eobert Dick. He pointed to the Homocanthus 

 arcuatus, which, though found in Russia, had only 

 recently been discovered in Scotland by his friend. To 

 him also he owed the Hbplacanthus marginalia, another 

 Russian placoid of the Old Red. There was also a 

 magnificent specimen of the Asterolepis, which had 

 enabled him to determine the place and form of a thickly- 

 tubercled, well-marked place on the middle of the palate. 

 This also had been sent to him by Robert Dick.* 



In sending this fine specimen to Hugh Miller, Dick 

 says " I give it you most cheerfully. Your kindness 

 deserves it. To any other I would not have parted 

 with it." At the same time he sends him the jaw of a 

 fossil fish, showing the outer row of teeth. " Looking 

 at them with the glass," he says, "they show a very 

 beautiful star-like arrangement of the channel through 

 which nourishment flowed to the tooth." 



Dick continued to correspond regularly with Hugh 



Miller. He spoke to him very freely. He thought 



that he was sometimes twisting geological facts to suit 



a religious theory. Dick thought very little of " authori- 



* Hugh Miller's Footprints of the Creator, pp. 334, 341. Ed. 1876. 



