420 ASSISTANCE TO HUGH MILLER. CHAP. xxiv. 



the fossil bones of the Holoptychius, the gigantic ganoid 

 fish of the Old Red, before he became acquainted with 

 Hugh Miller. He sent the specimen to Edinburgh, and 

 received Hugh's warm acknowledgments. The corre- 

 spondence between them at length ripened into a warm 

 intimacy, and Dick continued to send to Miller, as long as 

 he lived, the best of his findings among the fossil fish of 

 Caithness. " Indeed," says Mr. Peach, " Dick was 

 Hugh's greatest benefactor, and gave him more solid 

 assistance than any other person." 



Dick was one of the most unselfish of men. He 

 made every one free to his stores of knowledge. He 

 gave freely, without any hope of reward. He had no 

 jealousy, no mean rivalry. Though he hammered and 

 chiseled for fossils, sometimes at the risk of his life, he 

 sent everything that was valuable to Hugh Miller 

 everything that was calculated to establish his views, 

 and to turn his gathered treasures to account in the 

 establishment of scientific truth. " But for him," says 

 one of his friends, "and his sedulous and faithful 

 attachment to Hugh Miller, in the capacity of 'lion's 

 provider ' (as was sometimes jocularly remarked between 

 themselves), the Footprints of the Creator might never 

 have been written ; or at least, being written, the great 

 culminating points in the argument would have been 

 shorn of their force and power ; and the principal facts, 

 and the greater portion of the descriptive geological 

 groundwork of the volume, would have been wanting." 



By Mr. Dick's specimens of the then unknown fish, 

 Hu^h Miller was enabled to identify the great Russian 



