220 GEOLOGICAL MAPS. CHAP. xv. 



" Your Edinburgh Professors can put on their spec- 

 tacles next time they travel north. If they wish to be 

 respected, they must be a little more particular." 



Dick himself had bought one of the best maps of the 

 time. He used it for travelling purposes. He noted 

 down on it the direction of his journeys. He marked 

 the dips of the strata in nearly every part of the county. 

 He noted the disturbances, the faults, the beds in con- 

 fusion, the sites of the boulder clay, the flagstones, the 

 red sandstone, the gneiss, the conglomerates, and the 

 various geological formations of Caithness. The map is 

 full of his marks. In some places, where a river or a 

 loch is put, he marks " nonsense " or " stuff," meaning 

 that there is no such thing. This map must have been 

 his pocket-companion for many years. Underneath it 

 he writes : " I have been rambling over Caithness since 

 1830, and anything more unlike the truth than the 

 above picture I have never seen. There is no pleasure 

 in marking anything on it. I have made an attempt to 

 put in roads. The dip is often seen by the road-sides." 



Writing to Hugh Miller about the geological maps of 

 Caithness, he said : " It would be easy to construct such 



a plaything as those maps of Messrs. , , and 



, but when you had done so, would the toy meet 



the felt necessity ? . . . brave gentlemen ! bold men 

 and daring ! how gallantly you have set the truth aside ! 

 here laying down your fancy ovals, there your half- 

 moon patches ! just as if Nature were strictly bound 

 down to mathematical figures, squares, and circles. How 

 inimitably you have run your Old Red in Caithness 



