APPENDIX. 319 



exercises its influence on plant and animal life alike. At 

 Altnaharrow, on the road between Lairg and Tongue, is 

 a small clump of spruce and larch, and it is wonderful 

 how the bird-life is at once observed to be associated with 

 this oasis, and the yellow hammer, chaffinch, and robin, 

 the wren and the hedge-sparrow reappear at this isolated 

 station. At Loch Hope Lodge, also, there is considerable 

 amenity of woodland, and before long the strips of 

 young wood lately planted on the improved land border- 

 ing Loch Shin will not only give shelter to the cropped 

 lands but also to innumerable birds and insects. At 

 Goberneasgach and in Glen Golly is a considerable slope 

 clad in birch-wood, in the very centre of a vast stretch of 

 barren deer-forest, also exerting its influence in a marked 

 degree upon the fauna. 



The Faunal Position of Sutherland. 



Scotland has been divided by Dr. Buchanan-White of 

 Perth into ten defined floral and faunal areas. These 

 are named, commencing in the south — Sol way, Tweed, 

 Clyde, Forth, Tay, Argyle, Dee, Moray, West Ross, and 

 Sutherland. We exclude here the Orkney and Shetland 

 Isles and the Outer Hebrides. These faunal areas are 

 separated by the natural watersheds, and are perhaps more 

 consistent in their peculiarities from a floral than from a 

 faunal point of view. It is not our intention at present 

 to insist upon the importance of these, or of the position 

 occupied by the area under our consideration from the 

 latter point of view, except in so far that we believe, 

 with the majority of naturalists, that natural divisions 

 cannot be quite so arbitrary as geographical or artificial 

 ones ; and we consider it desirable to indicate, as shortly 

 as possible, with which of these ten areas Sutherland 

 claims to have connection. 



The great dividing range of mountains which forms 

 the backbone of the county stretches northward from 

 the southern boundary to the Reay Forest, and then turns 

 eastward by Ben Hee, including all the head waters of 



