1 88 THE CRUISE OF THE BETSEY ; OR, 



deposits ; but though there is a reproduction of the original 

 works in their more characteristic passages, if I may so speak, 

 many of the readings are diverse, and the editions are all new. 

 It is one of the circumstances of peculiar interest with 

 which Geology at its present stage is invested, that there is 

 no man of energy and observation who may not rationally 

 indulge in the hope of extending its limits by adding to its 

 facts. Mr Dick, an intelligent tradesman of Thurso, agree- 

 ably occupies his hours of leisure, for a few months, in de- 

 taching from the rocks in his neighbourhood their organic 

 remains ; and thus succeeds in adding to the existing know- 

 ledge of palaeozoic life, by disinterring ichthyolites which even 

 Agassiz himself would delight to figure and describe. Seve- 

 ral of the specimens in my possession, which I owe to the 

 kindness of Mr Dick, are so decidedly unique, that they would 

 be regarded as strangers in the completest geological museums 

 extant. It is a not uncurious fact, that when the Thurso 

 tradesman was pursuing his labours of exploration among 

 rocks beside the Pentland Frith, a man of similar character 

 was pursuing exactly similar labours, with nearly similar re- 

 sults, among rocks of nearly the same era, that bound, on the 

 coast of Cornwall, the British Channel. When the one was 

 hammering in " Ready-money Cove," the other, at the oppo- 

 site end of the island, was disturbing the echoes of " Pudding- 

 Gno ;" and scales, plates, spines, and occipital fragments of 

 palaeozoic fishes rewarded the labours of both. In an article 

 on the scientific meeting at York, which appeared in " Cham- 

 bers' Journal" in the November of last year, the reading pub- 

 lic were introduced to a singularly meritorious naturalist, Mr 

 Charles Peach,* a private in the mounted guard (preventive 



* Mr Peach has discovered fossils in the Durness limestone, which rests 

 above the quartzite rock of the west of Scotland, that covers the Red 

 Sandstone long believed to be OLD RED. The fossils are very obscure. 



w. s. s. 



