GROWING OLD. 323 



matism that has been troubling me, and giving me that 

 dreadful pain in the eyes. . . . Your petting is not 

 good for me. I've been so long accustomed to rough 

 usage, that your kindness seems quite unnatural. I 

 have laid my own specks aside, and am trying your 

 pair, but there is no abatement in the rheumatism not 

 one hair. I pay for reading as dear as ever. It is 

 certainly rather hard that there should be any tax 

 whatever on the means of acquiring knowledge. 



" I am pretty indifferent to the thought of growing 

 old, if I could only read as freely as I used to do. 

 Nothing like the natural eyesight. I never wearied 

 then. I did not need to squeeze my eyeballs or my 

 eyelids, to get relief. If the pain were constant, I 

 should be truly miserable. But as yet the infliction 

 merely comes and goes." 



In the autumn of 1862, Professor Wyville Thomson, 

 then of Queen's College, Belfast, called upon Mr. Dick 

 at his bakehouse, and had some conversation with him 

 as to the fossil fishes of the Old Red Sandstone. The 

 Professor was introduced by Charles Peach, and was 

 therefore made cordially welcome. After some conver- 

 sation about fossils, Dick turned to the subject of 

 Botany, and the Professor promised, so far as he could, 

 to furnish him with the specimens of dried plants of 

 which he was still in want. On his return to Belfast, 

 he sent Dick a list of British plants, and asked him to 

 mark those which he required for his herbarium. 



Sir Wyville Thomson has favoured us with the fol- 

 lowing recollection of his visit : 



