12 THE SCOTTISH NATURALIST 
species, accompanied by such legends as “rare,” “local,” 
“common,” “abundant everywhere,’ or even with such 
rather superfluous phrases as “found in all suitable 
localities.” A noticeable tendency in such works, and 
apparently an increasing one, is to dismiss with brevity 
the more widespread and typical species of the list, and 
on the other hand to deal exhaustively and at length with 
every casual wanderer which has staked a claim to a place 
in the British Bird List. In a recently published work, 
for instance, the distribution of the Robin is considered 
to be sufficiently dealt with by the statement “common in 
all suitable localities, and even found on the higher hills” ; 
from which latter remark we incidentally gather that the 
higher hills are not suitable localities in spite of the bird’s 
presence. In the same book, in an account of so 
representative a species as the Meadow-pipit, we are 
informed that “this bird is so common, even on the highest 
moors, that we may be pardoned for passing it over 
briefly.” What would be thought, to take a parallel which 
comes near to us, of an ethnologist who, in professing to 
give an account of the races of men inhabiting the 
British Islands, was to dismiss in such summary fashion 
the Saxon and Celt, but proceeded to deal exhaustively 
with the recorded visits to this country of the Andaman 
Islanders! Surely the inhabitants of a country, whether 
human or avian, deserve notice in direct proportion to 
their range and numerical standing. 
Taking, then, as a basis, the faunistic list, the next step 
in our investigation is the working out of the manner 
of distribution of the species, a problem far from exhausted 
by such remarks as I have quoted. No one supposes, of 
course, that birds are distributed accidentally throughout 
the country; certain species are associated with particular 
surroundings, recognised by such rough classifications as 
Woodland Birds, Aquatic Birds, Sea-birds, and so on. As 
a rough generalisation it might be set down that, as the 
plant-formation of a country is based on and is dependent 
on the geology, and the insect-fauna depends on the flora, 
so in turn the bird-life depends upon the plant-formation 
