NEAR SKARSKERRY. 227 



... I turned away, and wound my way Dunnet-wards, 

 examining every accessible ridge on my way up. There 

 is a wondrous similarity among the rocks of Caithness 

 everywhere, though from the Haven of Mey up to 

 Scarskerry they are charged with iron to a greater 

 extent than in any other spot. At the little Mill of 

 Mey they are literally red as 'keel, and, tilted up at a 

 high angle, dipping north-east. ... As I passed on, 

 looking down from the rocks, I could identify the dark 

 Barrogill bed, buried deep beneath those rough red 

 strata. And in some gyoes I exclaimed, as I looked 

 down, ' There's Thurso beds ! and there, and there !' 



"Near Scarskerry, at a jutting promontory, the 

 dark bituminous beds, and grey limy beds, many feet 

 in thickness, are seen tilted up at an acute angle, thin, 

 slaty, rugged, and hard, and across their sharp edge the 

 chafing waves roll twice every day.* I had marked 

 them often as I passed along at former visits ; but the 

 white surf had debarred me of the pleasure of a reeon- 

 naisance. But this time 'twas all right, and I plied the 

 hammer where hammer had never been plied before. 

 ... I found a few broken fragments of Asterolepis, 

 scales of the same, and a few scales of Diplopterus. 



* In another letter to Hugh Miller, Dick says : " You know 

 Nichol's Architecture of the Heavens, and his plates of the Nebulae ? 

 Well ; many of the ends of our flagstones resemble them a series of 

 star-like forms, set upon a jet-black ground. Is it not extraordinary 

 that upon the end of a stone there should be resemblances to a series 

 of forms traced by telescopes in immensity ? Indeed no ! All Nature 

 is alike. The ripple-mark may any day be seen in the clouds, as welj 

 as on the sea-shore, or in the rocks." 



