112 A VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF THE MORAY BASIN. 



separate the various water systems. Another marked feature is 

 the curiously rounded disposition of the upper valleys, as described 

 under Upper Cabrach Valley of Deveron, and instanced in the 

 upper basin of the Livet, and, outside our area, of Glenbucket. 

 Besides these characteristics there is the generally unwooded 

 aspect of the hills ; the deep valley of Avon, and the Deveron : 

 the lesser glens, denes, and mountain rifts of the smaller streams 

 traceable only by deeper shadows or by narrow threads of native 

 rock-rooted birches which cling to their precipitous sides. The 

 earns and cols are clad in heather, here and there scraggy and 

 crisp, growing on stony shallow soil, but in some parts deep and 

 luxuriant, and yielding famous grouse-ground. Near the higher 

 summit levels are a few mossy tarns and marshy hollows, but no 

 sheets of open water worthy of the name of lochs. But these tarns 

 and hollows hold many pairs of Common Gulls — as for instance on 

 the heights of Gruamach, where there are some thirty pairs ; on the 

 watershed between Glenlivet and Blackwater ; on the watershed 

 between Deveron and Bogie, and elsewhere among the Cams. 



All through these hills and earns and among the steep sides of 

 the glens are rugged stony faces and screes, seldom however break- 

 ing into actual precipices, and, save in one place, scarcely ever 

 affording eyrie-hold for a Golden Eagle. Ben Einnes is more 

 than a Carn. It is a great mountain with tremendous base and 

 jagged tops, and it ' once upon a time ' held an eyrie of the king 

 of birds. In one place only has the eagle, and that only of late 

 years, attempted to establish a new eyrie ; there, it is hoped, it will 

 be well and carefully preserved. Only in one other part of our 

 Moray basin is there another tract of country at all resembling 

 this, and that we call the North Carn District which is grouped 

 around the middle courses of the Findhorn around Tomatin and 

 the watersheds of Nairn, Findhorn, and Dulnan, or the eastern 

 foothills of the Monadhliath mountains. These districts are 

 pre-eminently the home of the Eing Ouzel, which fact, to the 

 naturalist's sense, may perhaps give a finer intuition than all our 

 descriptive attempt. Below the great circular upper valleys the 

 banks contract, the hills rise more abruptly and steeply to the 

 earn level of, say, 1500 to 2000 feet. Such are Gruamach and 



