40 The Soils of Scotland 



moors and dry grasslands prevail in the drier climate of 

 central and eastern Scotland''. 



Something like two-thirds of the surface of Scot- 

 land lies more than 1000 feet (c. 300 m.) 

 I \ ^^ ' above sea-level, and therefore above the 

 agricultural area, which only in a few places 

 reaches this altitude and rarely exceeds it. The great 

 bulk of this elevated area is known as "the Highlands," 

 the great hill complex which contains the highest summits 

 in the British Isles (p. 17). The Highland area occupies 

 practically the whole of the northern half of Scotland, 

 except the broad shelf of low country fringing the North 

 Sea (Fig. 2, p. 19). 



The Highlands fall naturally into two districts, 

 separated by a chain of lochs ^ lying in a deep trench 

 (Glenmore — the big glen) which cuts across the country 

 from north-east to south-west and marks the line of a 

 great fault. 



The North-western Highlands form a wild, remote, 

 and mountainous region, though its average altitude is 

 not so great as that of the Central and Eastern Highlands 

 lying south and east of Glenmore. This northern region 

 is much cut up by deep fjord-like sea-lochs, and by deep 

 inland valleys, so that areas exceeding 2000 feet (610 m.) 

 are small and detached, though numerous. The country 

 is built up of schists, quartzites and granites ; the high 

 plateaux are in places covered with glacial deposits, and 

 these with deep peat, from which the isolated ranges 

 and summits rise abruptly. Though lime-containing soils 

 are by no means absent, and sometimes influence the 

 vegetation, the mantle of deep, highly acid, peat passes 



1 Cf. the vegetation map accompanying M. Hardy's " Esquisse de la 

 GAographie et de la Vig^tation des Highlands d'Ecosse," Scottish Geo- 

 graphical Magazine, 1906. 



2 These lochs are oonneoted by the Caledonian Canal, which joins the 

 North Sea and the Atlantic. 



