20 ANNALS OF SCOTTISH NATURAL HISTORY 



We would like to have had more precise locale, or at least ascertained 

 on which side of the backbone of Scotland he observed it. Our own 

 observation was made in midsummer. At the latest date we can 

 give (September 1895), it still continues of as great rarity as ever in 

 the Moray Firth, as we are assured by Mr. M'Leay of Inverness. 



But in the extreme north of the area of the Moray Basin, 

 Buckley has met with them on one loch " in considerable numbers 

 all through the summer," but does not record any instance of its 

 nesting. This appears to be an outlet at present from Caithness 

 across the low range of rolling hills, which only offers a very slight 

 impediment to their movements as compared with ranges of higher 

 elevation ; and a tendency is indicated by this expansion to a 

 future populating of the whole (true) Sutherland faunal area. 



Along the depression of the Great Glen it is equally scarce. 

 One was shot at Lochletter on Loch Meiklie, Glen Urquhart, in 

 1878, /// severe weather. Loch Meilkie, which is known to ourselves 

 personally, is fairly well suited, especially at its upper end, for final 

 occupation; but at present the 1878 bird can only be classed as a 

 rare (some people would call it accidental !) occurrence, as we con- 

 sider it as yet quite to the right or left, or " out of the tracks," of the 

 direct influence of the bird's regular " fly-lines." All accounts agree 

 that it is only in severe winters they occur (or nearly so at least). 



The Tufted Duck being of sedentary disposition after occupancy 

 of new centres, no doubt finds the whole great Moray Basin so 

 hemmed in by the highest mountains of Scotland round such a 

 large portion of its circumference that the return journey let us 

 say if such occurs at all finds obstacles and checks to its progress 

 at every point, and up to this point of the dispersal of the species 

 prefers to follow lines of less resistance, viz. to the south of Geikie's 

 great Geological Fault, and again north of Scotland by the Pentland 

 Firth and the lower lands of Caithness, as we have found on a 

 previous occasion to have been the case with the Starling. As, 

 however, in time, dispersal, expansion, extension caused by increase 

 of numbers takes place (even in the same ratio as in the past 

 twenty years it has done, accelerated no doubt by the wise Act 

 which saves many wild-fowl from destruction, and which was passed 

 in 1880), both ends of the Great Glen will become populous, as the 

 line of least resistance to future colonists, first as a winter resort, 

 and finally as a permanent residence. 



SUTHERLAND AND CAITHNESS. 



Lewis Dunbar, in our "Vertebrate Fauna of Sutherland and 

 Caithness," when referring to this species at the time as "breeding 

 but rarely,'' far up the country amongst flows and " dhulochs " 

 around Strathmore Lodge, really referred to Scoters. It is, so far 

 as we know, not the habit of the present species to nestle far up the 



