MAIN ARGYLL AND ITS INLAND MOLLUSCAN FAUNA 229 



MAIN ARGYLL AND ITS INLAND MOLLUSCAN 



FAUNA 

 By W. Denison Roebuck, M.Sc, F.L.S. 



This is the second of a series of papers on the vice-counties 

 of Scotland, based on the records of the Conchological 

 Society of Great Britain and Ireland, of which the writer is 

 Hon, Recorder, no records being included beyond those 

 which have been seen by the Society's official referees. 



Argyllshire is divided, under the Watsonian vice-county 

 scheme, into no less than f>ve vice-counties or parts of vice- 

 counties. Of these, two are island-groups. Vice-county 103, 

 Ebudes Mid, includes Mull, lona, Tiree, and Coll, Vice- 

 county 104, Ebudes South, includes Islay, Jura, Colonsay, 

 Oronsay, Scarba, Lunga, and the small Isles of the Sea. Vice- 

 county loi, Cantire or Kintyre, including Gigha and other 

 small islets, is separated from Main Argyll by the line of the 

 Crinan Canal. All that part of the mainland portion of 

 Argyllshire which lies north of Loch Linnhe — the southern 

 prolongation of the great rift of the Caledonian Canal — 

 is joined to Western Inverness-shire to constitute vice- 

 county 97, Westerness. What remains after the separation 

 of these areas constitutes vice-county 98, Main Argyll. A 

 few small islets closely adjacent are included. The boundary 

 in Loch Linnhe is drawn so as to include Isle Lismore in 

 this vice-county. The channel which divides it from Ebudes 

 South passes up Scarba Sound, so as to include the Isles 

 of Seil, Luing, and Shuna, and the tiny islets off Craignish 

 Point. 



In physical configuration it is a mountain country 

 intersected by the deep sea-lochs or fiords so characteristic 

 of western Scotland ; and in the Naturalist's Map of 

 Scotland published by my late dear friend John A. Harvie- 

 Brown, to whom Scottish natural history owes, so much, it is 

 a region predominantly of moorland, hill-pastures, and other 

 uncultivated tracts, with scarcely any cultivated tracts or 

 woodlands. 



The conchologists who have contributed material for 



