CHAP. xvi. FOSSILS AT DURNESS. 257 



reap the harvest. I only got his gleanings. But I 

 found for myself new fields of un worked rocks in Suther- 

 landshire, and got new fishes there, and also new ones 

 in the old fields that Dick had so long been working in. 

 I was very fortunate. My duties led me so far about, 

 and gave me many opportunities that I should not 

 otherwise have had ; whereas Dick was confined to the 

 neighbourhood of his bakehouse in Thurso. All this I 

 took advantage of, after duty had been done. By rising 

 early in the morning and working until late at night ; by 

 often giving up my meal times, and satisfying myself with 

 a crust of bread and butter, and at night with a Highland 

 tea and something to eat, I fortunately contrived to fill 

 up my leisure hours with a good deal of useful work." 



The principal new field to which Mr. Peach refers, 

 was the limestone of Durness in Sutherland. The spot 

 was too far from Caithness to enable Dick to investigate 

 it. But it was in the Comptroller's way. He went to 

 Durness to visit a wrecked ship, and he did not neglect 

 his opportunity. He was the first to find fossils in the 

 limestones of Durness. Obscure organic remains had 

 before been detected by Macculloch in the quartz rocks 

 of Sutherland ; but they had gradually passed out of 

 mind, and their organic nature was stoutly denied even 

 by such geologists as Sedgwick and Murchison. Mr. Peach, 

 however, brought to light, in 1854, a good series of shells 

 and corals, which demonstrated the limestones containing 

 them to lie on the same geological horizon as some part 

 of the great Lower Silurian formations of other regions.* 



* When Sir Roderick Murchison heard of this discovery, he wrote 



