4 
Contribution to Vertebrate Fauna of West Ross-shire. 387 
siderably to the eastwards of the present watershed, has left 
the unmistakable footprints of its course in the smoothed 
and striated rock-surfaces, strewn with perched boulders, 
that are found everywhere on the shoulders and ridges, and 
even in some cases on the very summits of the hills. 
The later valley glaciers that marked the close of the 
Glacial Period, have further swept out the detrital drift and 
boulder-clay left behind by the ice-sheet, leaving the 
bottoms and sides of the valleys bared to the rocky floor, 
with here and there only a fringe or group of barren, stony 
moraines. 
The ground suitable for cultivation is therefore of very 
limited extent, and the arable lands are mostly confined to 
the raised beaches at the heads and along the shores of the 
sea-lochs, and to the alluvial deltas of the larger streams. 
Hence the birds usually associated with cultivation, such as 
the House Sparrow, Corn Bunting, Partridge, and Landrail, 
are extremely local in their distribution, and almost entirely 
confined to the coast-line. The streams flowing through 
these rocky glens carry little sediment to the sea, and even 
when in heavy flood will, from the nature of the rocks over 
which they flow, be charged only with coarse sand and shingle. 
There are consequently no muddy foreshores to attract the 
waders, no ooze-banks covered with zostera for the sea-ducks 
and wild geese. Both these classes of birds are in fact thinly 
and locally distributed, and the latter appear only to visit 
the shores in any numbers under stress of weather in winter. 
On the ‘shingle beaches however, Arctic Terns, Oyster- 
Catchers, and Ringed Plover breed in considerable numbers; 
while the long range of rocky coast and scattered islets 
afford nesting sites for Rock-Doves, Gulls, Shags, and a few 
Black Guillemots, though there are no great breeding colonies 
of Guillemots and Puftfins, such as those found farther to the 
north on the lofty cliffs of West Sutherland. 
THE FAUNA. 
It has been mentioned that the districts under considera- 
tion include some of the wildest and most rugged country in 
the Western Highlands. 
