232 LABORIOUS JOURNEYS. CHAP. xv. 



most innocent kind, scorning to mock, the use of any 

 living thing, not even rudely crossing the stray ideas 

 of any fellow-geologist. 



" I have been admiring the fashion of the grass of the 

 field ; not only admiring but collecting it ; not only 

 collecting but studying it. In the prosecution of the 

 study, I have made hundreds of laborious journeys. I 

 have ransacked the coast, rambled inland over moor, 

 niire, and meadow up hills and across valleys peeped 

 into running streams and stagnant pools, goose-dubs 

 and dismal lochs. Finally, I have been twice on the 

 pinnacle of Morven the Mont Blanc of Caithness. 



"Nor has the peculiar study that you favour been 

 forgotten. I have made many journeys expressly in 

 search of fossils, or to examine some particular stratum, 

 I have regularly visited the boulder clay after rains and 

 storms kept a keen eye after all the slate quarries 

 and even spent days in scrutinising Dunnet cliffs. 

 True, in March 1854, 1 clambered down the West Front, 

 more than two hundred feet, and examined, searched, and 

 hammered for hours ; and my only reward was a curious 

 thing, which is still a problem. Splendid sections are 

 those cliffs. How strange one feels, crawling along their 

 feet, and looking up their perpendicular height ! What 

 mites, what trifles we are amidst the might of earth and 

 the vastness of ocean !" 



Hugh Miller was at this time very much annoyed 

 at the leaders of the sect of which his newspaper 

 was the organ. "I see," says Dick, "that you are 

 not in heaven as to peace any more than I am. Yet 



