SMILES'S LIFE OF ROBERT DICK, BAKER, OF THURSO.*

RHALISE the scene. It is a small, low-roofed bakehouse, and an active, middle-aged man, with wide brow and thoughtful, twinkling eyes, and his working clothes well bewhitened, is spreading out flour on a baking-board, and deftly forming it into the oddest of unwonted patterns. Now he runs it up into a bluff headland, again, with his fingers, be scoops out a gradually

deepening depression, as a couple of gentlemen intently look on, with not a little surprise. And having finished his manipulation, he sets about a series of the most minute explanations about beds and "dips," which indicate that he is master of his topic ; point- ing out how, here and there, the "received ideas" are as far from fact as if fact had had nothing to do with the matter. This most

original of map-makers is Robert Dick, baker, of Thurso, botanist and geologist, and his auditors are Sir Roderick Murchison, Baronet, Director-General of the Geographical Society, and Mr. C. W. Peach, A.L.S., who are receiving a valuable lesson on the geology and geography of that bald, bluff-coasted, wind-swept, northern Scottish county of Caithness. 'We have Sir Roderick's own word that the lesson. was well received and highly appre- ciated. At the meeting of the British Association at Leeds, in 1858, he said, in the course of a warm eulogy on Robert Dick :— " I am proud to call him my distinguished friend. When I went to see him, he spread out before me a map of Caithness, and pointed out its imperfections. He delineated to me, by means of some flour which he spread out on his baking-board, not only all its geographical features, but certain geological phenomena which ho desired to impress on my attention. Here is a man who is earning his daily broad by his bard work, who is obliged to read and study by night, and yet who is able to instruct the Director-General of the Geographical Society."

As for Robert Dick, he was probably the one person who did not enthusiastically greet Sir Roderick's words. He shrank from publicity ; notice of any kind distressed him, and to see his name in the newspapers was even painful. When, years before, Ilugh Miller, in the Edinburgh Witness, bad made grateful but not over- enthusiastic reference to the man who had sent him the rarest collection of fossils, some of which compelled him to change his views on important points, Dick wrote, "I beg you not to men- tion me ; make use of what I send you, but let your readers guess where it came from, if they are curious."

Doubtless it was difficult to help such a man, for he was sensitive, shy, and independent to the verge of disease ; but how we do regret, on national grounds, that he was left to toil and moil for daily bread, sometimes—after the era of over-competi- tion in baking began in Thurso—not earning even that, through weeks and months of the most intense anxiety ; and that his later days were shadowed by pain and suffering and heart-break. It is true that with Robert Dick, who was no mere country botanist or geologist, such as are to be found in almost any small town south, as well as north, of the Tweed, his enjoyments were pre- eminently such as he found for himself ; and that bad he been forced into circumstances uncongenial by reason of unaccustomed society or routine, he would have been as miserable as he ever was in Thurso. For there, if tired, weary, and worried, Nature was a delight to him, and always accessible ; he had but to walk a few steps and he was on a moor or a mountain, and whether in sun or storm, he found delight there. It is pathetically humorous to read how, after rheumatism had begun to distress him, he could walk himself free from the twitchings of pain for the time being, and obtain an access of true enjoyment. He was closely observant,—nothing escaped him ; he never had any reliance on the opinions of others, examining everything for himself ; and sometimes he was much inclined to poke fun at the book-geologists, who rode in gigs, and grudged to wet their feet. But be was a thinker, too, and could rise easily to the region of principles ; in fact, he might have done for other places what he did for Caith- ness, and thus have advanced the science substantially, if circum-

Robert Dick, Baker, of Thurso. Geofogist and Botanist. By Samuel Smiles, LL.D. With a Portrait etched by Bajon, and numerous Illustrations. London: John Murray.

stances had only been a little more propitious. It must not be inferred, however, that he is of the whimpering and discontented order. Far from it ; he shakes his trials aside lightly, with a stoical self-reliance and a subdued fun ; sometimes, while in pain himself, sending laughable rhymes to make his friends laugh, when they were ill or depressed ; and over some of these, which Mr. Smiles has given, others will laugh too. As for friends, he had not very many, but those which he had were staunch ; his great reserve kept him apart from the townsfolk, to whom he neither gave entertainment, nor took it from them. At first they greatly wondered at him, could not make him out, fancied he was wrong in the head, roam- ing the country night and morning, like a gypsy ; and his life was almost as great a puzzle to them after he was sought out by strangers, and had to send away distinguished people—even Dukes—who wished to see him, because to leave his batch would have been to spoil it,—and " wha would have paid him for that," as his faithful housekeeper said. For all these things made no change in Dick's way of life ; Sir George Sinclair could not draw him from his bakehouse to meet Mr. Thomas Carlyle at breakfast, any more than could the townsfolk. He himself gave the cue to this exceeding shyness and reserve, and it is one which imparts a peculiar interest and pathos to his biography from first to last.

lie was the son of an officer of Excise, a man of some intelli- gence, stationed at Tullibody, at the foot of the Scottish Ochils. Early his father proudly perceived in Robert such intellectual promise as led him to hold out hope of a college education. But all was changed through the death of the mother, when Robert was about ten. By-and-by his father married again, and the fate of step-children was too truly that of Robert and the rest. They were cruelly treated, held as drudges, and Robert was punished for his rovings in the woods and hills, in which be had formerly been encouraged. He was sent as apprentice to a baker in Tulli- body, at the beginning of his thirteenth year. Up at three in the morning, and kept trudging about with heavy loads of bread, was not a bright lot, but Robert felt it was better than home had been. He was cheerful, made friends with his master's children, and became a favourite with his master, who was in after-years very willing to oblige and aid him. As he returned with his empty basket, he could pick up a flower or a rare plant as he went along a footpath ; and he had already begun to collect the rarer ones, and had gathered a few favourite volumes, which be could read in the room above the bakehouse, in which he slept. But he says of his boyhood :— " All my naturally buoyant, youthful spirits were broken. To

this day I feel the effects. I cannot shake them off. It is this which still makes me shrink from the world." He had fortunately picked up a fair rudimentary education at the parish school, and a little Latin, which he found of great use to him afterwards in his botanical researches. When his apprenticeship was out, he worked as a journeyman in Leith, Glasgow, and Greenock. Then, as he did not seem to make much of it, his father, who had now been transferred to Thurso, said that he should come there and start business, as there was an opening for a baker. lle went, re- mained in Thurso for the rest of his life, doing all the work of the bakehouse himself. He devoted all his leisure-time to scien- tific work. First, the sea-beach attracted him, and he studied conchology, made a very fine collection of shells ; then he took up botany, and in his wanderings was led to questionings which suggested geology, and he may be said to have thoroughly " done " Caithness-shire in all these departments, discovering in the Lower Old Red the gigantic holoptychius, to the surprise of geologists ; while, to the surprise of botanists, he produced specimens of plants in Caithness which they had said were not to be found in Great Britain. As Thomas Edwards did in Banff, he marked out the county into districts, which he took in turn, and each of which he thoroughly examined :— " He gathered insects," says Mr. Smiles, "while he collected plants. They both lay in the same beat. After his bread was baked in the morning and ready for sale, he loft the shop to the care of his house- keeper, and went out upon a search. Or he would take a journey to the moors or mountains, and return home at night, to prepare the next day's baking. He began to make his entomological collection when he was about twenty-five years old. He worked so hard at the subject, and made so many excursions through the country, that in about nine months he had collected specimens of nearly all the insect tribes that Caithness contained. He spent nearly every moment that he could spare, until he thought that he had exhausted the field. He worked out the subject from his own personal observation. He was one of those men who take nothing for granted. Books were an essential end, but his know- ledge was founded not on books, but on nature. He was not satisfied with the common opinion as to the species or genus to which any individual of the insect world belonged. If he had any doubts about an insect, from n gnat to a dragon-fly, he would search out the grub, watch the process of its development from the larva and chrysalis state, until

it emerged before him in unquestionable identity Few con- stitutions," Mr. Smiles goes on to say, " could have stood the amount of toil and privation which he endured, during his long course of inquiry into the fossils, plants, grasses, and mosses, over the length and breadth of Caithness. He had often walked from fifty to eighty miles between one baking and another, with little more in his scrip than a few pieces of biscuit."

Though, in one sense, independent of books, we should not omit to mention that Dick was a great book-lover, indulging himself in fine editions of his few favourites, which were con- veyed by him packed up carefully inside his sacks of flour, as were- also a microscope and other scientific instruments. His aversion even to make the attempt to set down any continuous and de- tailed record tf his work is the more astonishing, that his letters prove him to have.been really gifted with a fluent and easy style, both in prose and verse : for while be passes easily from grave earnest to pawky fun and lively satire, be can also break quite naturally into a bit of rhyme, by no means without pith and point. He confesses that in his earlier days he had in secret composed bag- fuls of verse, and though he avers that nobody would have given a bawlice (halfpenny) for them, we should have been well content to read them, by way of experiment and a study in character. In everything that Dick did he showed character, and doubt- less in his despised early verses also. What has made the writing of his biography possible is the fact that to a few trusted correspondents he sent delightful letters. Though he disliked to see his name in the newspapers, and was not flattered by Sir Roderick Murchison's mention of him before the British Association, he wrote often and at length to his sister, telling her of his difficulties and trials, but also happily of his work and its pleasures,—how a new plant, found on a hill-top, consoled him for business lost by competition, and how a new fossil made him forget his bodily pains. Here is a specimen :— "Have you ever,- he asks her, "been all alone on a dreary moor, when the shadows of the coming darkness are settling down, and the cold, clammy fog goes creeping up the hill before you ? It is hard work, and very uncanny walking to pick your steps, as there is no proper light to guide you. For you must remember that moors are not bowling-greens or finely-smoothed lawns. They may be flowery paths, it is true. but very rough ones, full of man-traps, jags, and holes, into which, if you once get, you may with difficulty wade your way out again. 'But on I went—hop, step, and jump—now up, now down, huffing and puffing. with my heart rapping against my breast like the clapper of a mill. Then everything around looked so quiet, with the mist growing so thick, that it was difficult to distinguish one hill from another. Had I not been intimately acquainted with every knowo and hillock of the country through which I was travelling, I never could have got through it. But cheer up ! Never lose heart ! There's the little loch at last, and there's the hill ! Ay, but your work's not done yet. You must climb the hill, for what you seek is only on the very top. It's rough work running through a moor, but it takes your wind clean out of you to climb the hill that lies beyond it. Were you ever up a hill-top at night, your lee lane [Anglice, all alone], with the mist swooping about you, and drooking your whiskers and eyebrows ? I daresay no. But up this hill I had to clamber on any hands and knees, to find the plants that I had come in search of. Yes ! I found them, though I was not quite sure until the sun had risen to en- lighten me. Then I found that I had made out my point. The light enabled me to make my way down-hill. Feeling thirsty, as well I might, I clambered over rocks and braes and heather, to a very pretty loch at the hill-foot. Picking my steps to a place full of large stones, I came to a pair of them, where I stooped down into the clear water and drank my fill. It is a grand thing to dip your nose down into the water like a bird, with tho shingle and gravel lying below you, and then take your early morning drink. But I have no time to say out ray say. Only this, sister, only this : never lose heart in the thickest mists you should ever get into ; but take heart, for as- suredly the sun will rise again, and roll them up and away, to he seen no more."

And again, at a later time :—

" Not long since I had the eager curiosity to walk out one night, when I picked up a very nice moss, by the light of the moon. You may ask, how could I do that? Thanks be praised, I've got my eye- sight, my feelings, and I can grape [feel with the band], too. It was a very frosty night, and hailstones lay thick upon the bog ; but I knew the exact spot where the mosses grew. I had taken a long look at them six weeks before I found them in prime condition. The world was asleep. Mosses, not Moses. But I often consult Moses' writings. How fine that is about the scapegoat sent into the wilderness, with the cord about his horns, bearing a burden that he did not feel. Splendid Bible that. If any friend asks you about your brother Robert, you may say that he inherits the blessing of Jacob's son. If they inquire which son, you may say the one who was likened to an ass stooping down between two burdens,' with this difference, that instead of two, your brother has a score or two of burdens. He knows by sad experience that 'rest is good.' But he is at times so wearied and sore, that he can- not find rest. And further, the person who said that the harder the work, the sweeter the rest,' never toiled hard in his life. But there is nothing for the machine that has been long in use but to keep it going, otherwise it would fall to pieces."

Though his neighbours never came to understand him properly, they were fain to ask his opinion on scientific matters, and he- 'was often pestered with idle people and with idle questions, and by people, too, who affected to know more than they did. This small extract will show how he dealt with all these, and how exact and thorough was his knowledge :—

" A person who made considerable pretensions to botanical know- ledge met him one day, and asked him if be knew whether the county produced any statice armeria. Oh,' said Dick, if you will just call it Lea Gillyflower, or, if you please, Thrift, you will find it at any road- side.' Another gentleman found a pretty flower growing profusely in a small atrath a few miles out of Thurso. He took it to Dick.—'Do you know that ?' he asked.—' Yes, he said ; yon got it at the side of the burn at Olrig.'—' How do you know that ?'—' Because it grows in two or three places in Caithness •, but these are too far off for you to have been there to-day.'—Another called upon him with a strange flower. have got a new thing for you to-day, Mr. Dick.'—' Oh no,' said Dick,' I know it quite well You got it near Shebster' ' indicating a small hillock on a moor in the western part of the parish of Thurso. —‘ Yes,' said the inquirer,' but how do you know that ?'—Simply because it grows nowhere else in Caithness."

He was a bit of a humourist with the pencil, as well as with the pen. He had a special delight in Egyptian mythology, and had drawn many figures of the gods of Egypt over the walls of his bakehouse :—

"Amongst them was a spirited and well-executed figure of the beautiful Greek boy drawing the thorn from his foot. This was over the fire-place. Beside it were two figures of Egyptian idols. On the side of one of the windows there was the figure of an ape, excellently drawn. What Dick thought of the development hypothesis may be understood from his figures of the Greek boy and ape. They could be seen at the same place from the door of the apartment, and presented a striking contrast, quite irreconcilable with the idea of even a remote identity. When questioned on the subject, Dick humorously indicated the presence of the drawings. He pointed to them, but said nothing."

Though in much he admired Mr. Darwin, he could never bring himself to regard the general Darwinian view with favour.

Another friendship which was very perfect and beautiful was that with Mr. C. W. Peach, the Preventive Service geologist, who was, during the latter part of Dick's life, stationed in the North of Scotland, and often visited Dick, obtaining not only free entree to the bakehouse, but the right to introduce others,

which was the highest mark of esteem and trust that Dick could bestow. Mr. Smiles has given a very admirable sketch of Mr. Peach's life, and of his association with Dick, in their mutually aided work, with many letters, marked by fine insight and full of humour.

We need only add that the portraits of Dick and his friend, Mr. Peach, are executed with great skill ; and that the numerous sketches of Caithness scenery, which do so much to enliven the volume, will communicate even to the reader who has never crossed the Tweed a very fair notion of what that country is like.