56 THE SCOTTISH NATURALIST 



MOLLUSCAN INVESTIGATION IN WEST ROSS. 



By Fred Booth. 



[This is the second instalment of the account of the investigation of the 

 northern range of land and freshwater mollusca in Scotland, under- 

 taken by Mr Booth with the aid of a Government grant. W. D. R.] 



In vice-county 105, Ross West, I visited Loch Alsh and 

 Gairloch, but the whole of my collecting was done at the 

 latter station. 



Loch Alsh appeared to be nothing more or less than a 

 rocky promontory covered with ling and heather. There 

 was no woodland until well up the railway on the higher 

 parts of Loch Carron, where there were several new and old 

 pine woods on the slopes of the hills, the railway in many 

 instances running through or alongside them. They 

 occurred at intervals along the line towards Achnasheen 

 and Inverness. The country all along was wild and 

 mountainous, with bleak heathery moorland, lochs, and 

 mountain streams, and all very uninviting from a concho- 

 logical point of view. 



The Gairloch country is also mountainous, and well 

 wooded about the lower part of Kerrysdale, the lower part of 

 Flowerdale, and the lower parts of some of the glens on the 

 mountain sides. West and north of Gairloch the hills are 

 low, and heather and ling continue down to the sea. The 

 beach is shingle and rocks, with the exception of one little 

 bay between the hotel and the pier, which has a sandy 

 beach, the only one I noted on the west coast. The mountains 

 are in most instances clothed with vegetation, though the 

 higher parts are scantily covered with Erica cinerea, mosses, 

 and lichens. The ravines down the mountain sides are 

 rocky, precipitous, and very deep in places, with here and 

 there rank vegetation growing on ledges very difficult in 

 some cases impossible of approach. In the woodland the 

 trees are oak, beech, elm, ash, birch, with a sprinkling of 

 pine. These pine-trees are being cut down and sawn up at 



