Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 9.djvu/108

372 or primitive giants, had been formed by the action of the waters of a lake that had stood at different heights, corresponding with those of the shelves, until it had finally burst through its latest barrier in consequence of some great natural convulsion probably the same that formed the great glen of Scotland through which the Caledonian Canal has been carried. This simple theory, although it sorely discomfited the lovers of the wonderful, and worshippers of superstitions old," was greatly admired by the sober and scientific, not only for its originality, but the powerful array of facts and arguments that were adduced to support it, illustrated as it farther was by eight drawings, with which Sir Thomas accompanied his dissertation. This essay, with engravings of his sketches, was published in the "Transactions" of the Society. He had thus not only the merit of throwing new light upon the theory of natural geological formations in opposition to the artificial, but of directing particular attention to these phenomena of Lochaber, which have been investigated by subsequent geologists, among whom may be mentioned Mr. Milne, and Sir G. S. M'Kenzie. Another subject, of scarcely less importance, that occupied the researches of Sir Thomas, was the natural transport, by means of ice, of a large boulder on the shore of the Moray Frith. His account of this huge isolated stone, and his conjectures as to the mode in which it had found its ultimate landing-place, was published in the third volume of the "Wernerian Transactions," while his theory formed the basis on which several scientific writers afterwards endeavoured to account for still more important revolutions by means of ice, which had been effected over a large portion of the earth's surface.

The nature of these studies, extending over so many fields, and the reputation which they had already won for him, would have constituted a stock in life upon which most of our comfortable country gentleman would have contentedly reposed to the end. But the mind of Sir Thomas Dick Lauder possessed an amount of intellectual vigour that could not be so easily satisfied; he had only thus commenced, not concluded his career; and after having begun with science, he turned, by way of relief, to the lighter departments of literature, through which he was to be better known to the world at large, than by his more laborious investigations among migratory rocks and water-chiselled highways. On the commencement of "Blackwood's Magazine," at the beginning of 1817, he became one of its earliest contributors; and his first tale which appeared in it, under the title of "Simon Ray, gardener at Dumphail," was written with such vigour and truthfulness, that, for a time at least, it was supposed to have proceeded from no other pen than that of Sir Walter Scott himself. Some impression of this kind, indeed, seems at first to have been made by the anonymous contribution upon the conductors of the magazine also, for they appended to the tale the flattering announcement of, "Written, we have no doubt, by the author of Waverley." The great era of magazines had now fully commenced, as well as that of steam, in which the impatient mind, no longer booked for the slow conveyance of folios and quartos, was to be carried onward with railway speed; and to the most important of these periodicals Sir Thomas became a frequent and welcome contributor. Besides these light but attractive sketches, he also became a writer in the grave methodical pages of the "Edinburgh Encyclopedia," for which he drew up the statistical account of the province of Moray. It was in the midst of these, and such other literary occupations, that he succeeded to the baronetcy of Fountainhall, by the death of his father in 1820, and was the seventh who had enjoyed that title.