CHAP. xxi. DIGGING AMONGST THE ROCKS. 357 



Two months later he wrote to his brother-in-law : 



" Perhaps you are thinking that I am busy with 

 those bones on the rocks here; but no! the last bone 

 nearly killed me with fatigue and cold. Besides, I cut 

 my hands, and cut my little finger. Qf all the labour I 

 ever tried, there is none like digging on the sea-shore 

 crouching down on one's knees in a hole, bothered with 

 incoming water, and hammering, and picking, and 

 sawing all the while. 



" I have got another curious evidence about that fish, 

 which Hugh Miller never saw. Perhaps he dreamt of 

 it. Most certainly he spoke of a time when the bone 

 which he figured would yet be found. 



" After all, there will be no satisfying of those men's 

 doubts, until a whole fossil fish, of that particular kind, 

 turns up. I wish I was the lucky finder of it ; then I 

 would laugh ! 



''Indeed, I don't think I understand the fossil 

 myself. How little do we really know ; above all, how 

 little do we know accurately ! No entire fish has turned 

 up yet; only broken and disjointed pieces. And such 

 pieces ! Bones a foot and four inches across. No one 

 can credit it, unless he sees them. Perhaps I'll yet 

 turn up a whole fish! . . . Similar bones to these 

 two bones beside me no human eye ever looked upon 

 until August 1863." 



Dick continued at his digging. On the 31st October 

 he writes : " During the bypast week I have been 

 unexpectedly no less than three different times digging 

 amongst those dead fish and plants in the rocks on the 



