400 BOULDER FROM HELMSDALE. CHAP. xxui. 



required for all vegetation. The wise man said, thou- 

 sands of years ago, that 'nothing is hid from the heat 

 of the sun,' and the wise man was right." 



One morning, after he had got his work done, he 

 went out at four o'clock, to revisit for the last time a 

 selection of boulder clay by the river-side, about nine 

 miles from Thurso. His object was to ascertain whether 

 the late rains had exposed some shell or other fossil 

 worthy of being collected. He had before found shells 

 in the same place. It was moonlight, bright moonlight; 

 and he had a delightful walk by the river-side. When 

 the moon became clouded, the stars came out, and they 

 were extremely lovely. 



During his walk, he recognised a boulder stone which 

 had been brought by the ice from Helmsdale, Suther 

 iandshire, on the other side of the Morven hills. 



" And dost thou still, thou mass of breathing stone, 

 Thy giant limbs to night and chaos hurled, 

 Still sit as on a fragment of a world, 

 Surviving all ? " 



. These were the lines of Eogers that floated through 

 nis imagination. " Poor creatures that we are," he said, 

 "speculating about things that we know so little of. 

 And look at these stars, so far off in the infinite. What 

 do we know about them ? Are they also suns, each the 

 centre of a planetary system? Do the beings who live 

 there, enjoy and suffer and die as we do ? Alas ! how 

 little we know of the world we live in." 



Towards the end of his life, Dick read Colenso's 

 Pentateuch, and the book of Joshua. It was the work 



