562 



NATURE 



[December 30, 1920 



Norse vikings, and would therefore be post- 

 Roman. The advantage the volumes would gain 

 from expert supervision may be illustrated by the 

 sections on geology. Thus the Old Red Sandstone 

 is still attributed in the volumes on Orkney and 

 .Shetland and on Caithness and Sutherland to 

 lakes, whereas the work on Banff adopts the 

 fluviatile explanation. The table of the geological 

 succession in Caithness and Sutherland (pp. I3""i5) 

 states that the Upper Trias is absent from 

 England, and that the Upper Cretaceous consists 

 of "chalk and ware," whatever "ware" may be. 

 The summary of the Carboniferous suggests an 

 erroneous correlation of the English and Scottish 

 divisions ; the metamorphic rocks and schists are 

 described as Silurian and Ordovician, and as 

 younger than the Cambrian quartzites ; while the 

 discovery of Olonellus in beds above the Torridon 

 Sandstone did not "fix the age of the Cambrian," 

 but fixed those beds as Cambrian. The geological 

 map of Kirkcudbrightshire and Wigtownshire 

 omits the Permian of Loch Ryan, and marks the 

 Permian Sandstones west of Dumfries as " blown 

 sand and alluvium." The rainfall maps of Scot- 

 land in different volumes present marked differ- 

 ences in fact. 



The four new volumes cover areas representa- 

 tive of the chief geographical types in Scotland— 

 the highlands, the industrial localities of the Mid- 

 land Valley, and the agricultural districts of the 

 southern uplands — and the authors express clearly 

 the characteristic features of the districts. 



The Orkneys and Shetlands are the most 

 exceptional area in the British Isles, which is 

 differentiated by geographical structure, by the^ 

 far northern position which led to the occasional 

 visits of walrus until the destruction of the Spits- 

 bergen herds, and by the Norse influence to which 

 St. Magnus Cathedral is a striking witness. The 

 population is pure Norse, except for the modern 

 immigration of lowland Scots. The archipelagoes 

 are graphically described by Messrs. Heddle and 

 Mainland. 



The recent story of Sutherland and Caith- 

 ness is one of the saddest in the British Isles. 

 Sutherland is the fifth in size of Scottish counties, 

 and has the sparsest population of any British 

 county. Its population reached its maximum in 

 185 1, and that of Caithness continued to increase 

 until 1 86 1. There was a slight decline until 1871 ; 

 then with the great extension of the deer forests 

 followed swift and steady decline. Mr. 

 Campbell describes Sutherland as " a desolate 

 wilderness," and says that "one can behold in 

 every direction miles upon miles of country desti- 

 tute of any sign of human occupation." One 

 result of the depopulation is the increasing diffi- 

 NO. 2670, VOL. 106] 



culty in administration. The outlay on the roads, 

 according to Mr. Campbell (p. 149), now amounts 

 to an eighth of the total rental of the county. 

 Roads suitable for local needs are quite unable to 

 withstand motor traffic, and the upkeep of 500 

 miles of road at modern standards is beyond the 

 local resources. The financial problems of the 

 county are still unsolved. 



The Galloway country, including Kirkcudbright- 

 shire and Wigtownshire, the two southernmost 

 counties in Scotland, presents problems of a dif- 

 ferent order. The one industry is farming, and 

 mainly dairying ; it is the home of the famous 

 Galloway cattle. Farming has been greatly im- 

 proved by co-operative systems, of which two local 

 varieties are kaneing and bowing. In both the 

 farmer provides land, stock, equipment, and 

 fodder; labour is supplied by his associates, who 

 take the produce and pay for the use of the cows, 

 the kaner in cheese, and the bower in cash. The 

 development of central butter and cream factories, 

 which pay the farmers on the basis of the quantity 

 of butter-fat in the milk supplied, is a more 

 familiar co-operative method, and is proving very 

 helpful. 



The volume on Dumbartonshire, by Dr. F. Mort, 

 is most attractively written, and especially good on 

 the physical geography, although that subject is 

 unusually difficult, as the county consists of three 

 very dissimilar areas. It is part of the district 

 known as "the Lennox," and it would have made 

 a more natural geographical unit if it had been 

 combined with Stirlingshire. The western part 

 is an irregular strip of land running across the 

 grain of the country, and its structure can be 

 understood only by reference to the adjacent coun- 

 ties. The most important parts are that along 

 the north bank of the Clyde from Loch Lomond 

 to the western suburbs of Glasgow, and the de- 

 tached eastern portion which extends south of the 

 Kelvin further east than Stirling. It is owing to 

 the industrial activity of these two areas that the 

 population of the county, in spite of its sparseness 

 in the rest, is fifty-seven times as dense as that 

 of Sutherland, and has been growing at an ac- 

 celerated rate from the decade when the Highland 

 counties began their decline. 



Dr. Mort discusses the proposed Forth-Clyde 

 Ship Canal, and though the text refers to the 

 Kelvin Valley route, which is that regarded with 

 most favour in Glasgow, the only route marked 

 on the sketch-map as for a ship canal is that 

 through the Forth Valley. With present costs of 

 labour and material, the estimate quoted would 

 be quite inadequate, and a canal large enough to- 

 fulfil its proposed functions is probably at present 

 financially impracticable. J. W. Gregory. 



