Obituary. 143 



his leisure hours, that he earned for himself a -well-inerited fame in 

 scientific circles. He died at Thurso on the 17th of December last. 

 We are glad to be able to present our readers with a short account 

 of a man whose memory ought not to be lost. Mr. Dick was a 

 native of Fifeshire, but went to Thurso when young. He learned to 

 be a baker, and some time afterwards commenced business on his 

 own account. During his apprenticeship Mr. Dick exhibited a taste 

 for natural history. He would then spend even more than his spare 

 hours in local explorations, and every work on botany and ento- 

 mology was eagerly borrowed or acquired, and was read and studied 

 with the gi'eatest avidity. But it was when he became a journeyman, 

 and especially when he anived at the position of being his own 

 master, that he devoted himself with the most singular earnestness 

 to the study of science, spending many nights in the open air, and 

 being on many occasions for several days and nights engaged in 

 the investigation of the district, which in the end brought him 

 into possession of a museum of fossils and botanical and entomo- 

 logical specimens, which has been the admiration of the multitudes 

 of savans, from Sir Eoderick Murchison downwards, who have been 

 privileged to see it. Among the people of Thurso and neighbourhood 

 Mr. Dick was long looked upon as partially insane ; but, as time 

 rolled on, opinions gradually changed. By-and-by it began to be 

 whispered that men of great influence were visiting the mad Thurso 

 baker ; and when it was found that in the meetings of the British 

 Association for the Advancement of Science he was honourably men- 

 tioned, and that even Sir Eoderick Murchison had been receiving 

 lessons from him — some of his illustrations being drawn on the walls 

 of his workshop and his implements of trade — the opinion changed, 

 and Thurso people took pride in naming the great scientific baker of 

 their town. It was during his entomological and botanical explorations 

 that Mr. Uick began to cultivate a taste for geology. By-and-by he 

 became as deeply in love with it as with those other sciences, and in 

 the end he acquired a wonderful acquaintance with the science, and 

 was in frequent communication with the late Hugh Miller, Sir 

 Eoderick Murchison, and other geologists. His long and wonder- 

 ful travels in the district, and his extraordinary painstaking in- 

 vestigations and researches have resulted in the accumulation of 

 one of the most interesting collections of specimens to be any- 

 where seen. It is understood he has left the collection to the 

 Thurso Natural Science Association, established last year, which 

 will thus be in possession of a museum that many will covet. At a 

 special meeting of this association, a letter from its president, Sir Gr. 

 Sinclair, was read, in which he says — " The extent and variety of 

 his scientific acquirements were incredible, and almost unexampled. 

 He knew as much of many sciences as most professors knew about 

 one. When my very distinguished friend, the Duke of Argyll, 

 honoured me with a visit, he lost no time in repairing to Mr. Dick's 

 abode, and was most cordially received ; but neither on that, nor on 

 more than one similar occasion could I succeed in prevailing on 

 Mr. Dick to breakfast or dine with me. His unassuming modesty 



