424 HIS CAREFUL OBSERVATION. CHAP, xxiv 



of the greatest pleasures of Dick's life. We forget also 

 the elevating and purifying effects of searching after 

 truth. In pursuing knowledge, he was merely serving 

 his higher nature. 



Nor did he ever make a parade of what he knew. 

 He was modest and retiring. Others sought him, not 

 he them. He thought, like Newton, that all that we 

 know was as but mere shells on the sea-shore, compared 

 with what must ever remain unknown. And yet those 

 who were admitted to his intimacy were surprised at 

 the amount of knowledge he had acquired. 



"It was impossible," says Dr. Shearer, " for one 

 coming into the merest casual contact with him not to 

 catch up some portion of his own vivid enthusiasm in 

 natural science ; and no man was ever better fitted by 

 nature as a luminous and gifted expounder of scientific 

 truth. His conversation was so rich that one always 

 came away surfeited." 



"He combined in himself rare powers of original 

 research, and an amazing industry in the pursuit of 

 truth, with a sweet and winning eloquence which was 

 all his own. His collection of the British Flora is 

 almost unique in its completeness. Looking at the 

 difficulties he encountered in collecting it, his herbarium 

 is an extraordinary tribute to his diligence, skill, and 

 long-continued perseverance." 



Dick diligently applied himself to the study of all 

 that lay around him. He noted with wonderful accu- 

 racy the He of a country. He marked upon the map 

 that he carriM. about with him the faults, and dips, and 



