BOB DICK

Wairarapa Times-Age, 30 October 1940, Page 9

BOB DICK

AN INDEPENDENT SCOTSMAN. There was never a mere independent Scotsman than Bob Dick. His full name was Robert Dick, and he was a self-taught geologist and botanist. He had little education, and was anprenticed to a baker when 13. Working hard, he studied books, and made collections of plants. Before he was 20 he set up as a baker at Thurso, and while gradually building up a business. devoted every spare minute to natural history. In these days it is hard, to believe that men of Bob Dick’s type ever lived. Few men now could work as he worked. All day he was in Ihe bakehouse. All night he. bent over bis books. In between times he went off on Jong rambles. He was an indefatigable student of nature at first hand. Poverty swept down on him. Illness weakened him. Pain was his daily lot in later life, but he pressed on with his studies. Often he walked 50 or 80 miles between one baking and another, eating nothing but two or three biscuits. When he got back homo there was no time to rest—he had to bake. A man of sterling dualities, he sought no help, he wanted no reward, he expected no praise. He was always cheerful. always keen on .getting at the truth. He collected specimens of plants, and these, together with specimens for which he had made exchanges, grew to be an almost complete collection. * He gave Hugh Miller all the riches of his mind and experience, and the famous geologist once said! “Dick robbed himself to do me service.” ‘ When crippled with rheumatism he at hard rock for hours to get a perfect fossil. To the end he worked hard, and he was poor to the end, dving in great distress in December 1866, prematurely old at 55. He was truly astonishing, a man who loved truth for its own sake, and pursued it unflinchingly and uncomplainingly to the end.