PHYSICAL FEATURES. 



113 



Craig Succoth and Cam Dornie of Deveron, or Cam Dregnie and 

 the Convals of Fiddich. These rise on one side of the streams, 

 but agricultural lands often fringe the opposite bank. Winding 

 about among the haughs of the upper valleys are innumerable 

 tributary streams, holding a wealth of fat, if small, trout, and 

 mostly finding their origin in springs of purest limpid water 

 among the green patches and fozy * well-ees ' of the hill- 

 slopes, resembling in this respect many parts of our Scottish 

 border country. These streams maintain a steady flow, even 

 through continued drought, and when once in spate keep up 

 their colour and body for a considerable length of time. This 

 is owing to the natural drainage levels afforded by the hill- 

 slopes, and differs from Border streams, in that they are not so 

 suddenly flushed by artificial drains. The Cam District is also 

 more of a cattle than a sheep district, and a large portion, viz. the 

 Glen Fiddich and Blackwater Deer Forest is still in its original 

 state of nature. It is essentially a high pastoral country, agri- 

 culture being confined to the haughs and valleys and lower 

 hill-slopes, sheep, whilst not altogether absent, yet holding an 

 inferior position numerically, to cattle and deer. The agriculture, 

 however, where it has taken hold even amongst the higher-lying 

 farms, is of a high standard of merit, though the soil is, as a mle, 

 light and stony. 



Among the higher cams and cols a few Ptarmigan breed 

 annually where the thin, light soil has been scarped off the stony 

 underlying ground in patches, showing stony screes or scalps, but 

 though fairly distributed, these birds are by no means common nor 

 so abundant as higher up in their true home at over 2500 feet 

 elevation. 



The Cam District has its own interest of bird and other life, 

 but can scarcely be termed a paradise for the ornithologist, the 

 great part of the fauna being really more truly characteristic of 

 the deep sheltered glens and valleys, than of the bare scalped 

 ridges. As elsewhere among the tributaries of Spey and other 

 rivers of Moray, Oyster-catchers ascend far up the streams amongst 

 these foothills, and even penetrate to the bases of the Cairngorms. 

 Perhaps the following species may be considered to some extent 



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