Note AI — Chapter VI

I find, by some notes, which had escaped my notice when drawing up for the Witness newspaper the sketches now expanded into a volume, that in the year 1834 I furnished the collection of a geological friend, the Rev. John Swanson, minister of the parish of Small Isles, in the Outer Hebrides, with a well-marked specimen of the Pterichthys Milleri. The circumstance pleasingly reminds me of the first of all my early acquaintance, who learned to deem the time not idly squandered that was spent in exploring the wonders of bygone creations. Does the minister of Small Isles still remember the boy who led him in quest of petrifactions—himself a little boy at the time—to a deep, solitary cave on the Moray Frith, where they lingered amidst stalactites and mosses till the wild sea had surrounded them unmarked, barring all chance of retreat, and the dark night came on?