260 EXCHANGE OF SHELLS. CHAP. xvn. 



men shows as decidedly bony a structure as Coccosteus. 

 Your specimen is altogether new to me. I will take 

 good care of the fossil. ... I am in a tremendous hurry 

 of business to-day, but feel your kindness very much. 

 . . . Since you saw me here I have walked to Morven 

 top and back again to Thurso with little inconvenience. 

 I have since been at Scrabster hills, and intend being 

 at Duncansby Head very soon." 



Dick and Peach also interchanged shells with each 

 other, though Dick said in one of his letters " I do not 

 think that you require any information from me on 

 matters pertaining to this or any other study or research. 

 You are a bred veteran, and I am but a greenhorn." 

 Still, Dick would not give way on any point on which 

 he thought that he was right and Peach wrong. He 

 insisted that he was entitled to have his say, especially 

 where his own eyes were concerned. He did not believe 

 so much in books or in theories, but he believed in facts. 



In one of Peach's enthusiastic letters he expresses 

 the hope that Dick is " revelling in the midst of the 

 beauties he has collected." To this Dick replies, " I 

 dinna ken. . . . You perhaps know the story of the 

 gentleman who returned from India with a black ser- 

 vant. One frosty morning the master went a-shooting, 

 and took the dark Oriental to beat the bushes. He was 

 rendered powerless by the cold. The master impatiently 

 demanded why he did not cry ' Hush, cock, hush.' ' Ah, 

 massa,' he tremulously replied, ' me wish hush cock had 

 never been born.' And so, Massa Peach, sometimes I 

 wish beauties had never been born. Not that there is 



