OF SUTHERLAND AND CAITHNESS. 
57 
Ord itself, contain colonies of gnlls, shags, and numbers of rock- 
pigeons. 
Having thus described the physical aspects of Caithness, it 
may not be out of place shortly to insist upon the importance of 
these features, and the part they play in the increase and distri- 
bution of species, whether of mammals, birds, or other classes of 
animal life. 
ISTo doubt remains in the minds of unprejudiced naturalists 
regarding the rapidity with which many species are extending 
their range in Scotland, not merely in the newly planted areas, but 
also even in more barren reaches of moor- and moss-land, as well 
as in out-of-the-way nooks and corners. So patent are these 
extensions — and in many cases fluctuations — even to the most 
casual observer who is a resident in the country, that we 
should scarcely deem it necessary to dwell upon the fact. But 
these perfectly well-known and recognised processes are most 
singularly relegated by certain writers to the regions of myth, 
mist, and mystery, and are queried somewhat in the following 
style : — " It has not been recorded north of the Moray Firth ; but 
our information on the ornithology of this district is so meagre 
that it may have been overlooked " (the italics are otirs). 
Writers whose personal acquaintance with the more boreal 
portions of Great Britain is so infinitesimal and fragmentary, and 
whose personal inspection of Scotland as a whole is viewed through 
exceedingly " provincial " {i.e. London) spectacles — almost of the 
Mark Twain's Harrisian type— are quite right to acknowledge 
their own lack of information, but we hardly think it is desir- 
able, in these latter days of rapid extension of range of species — 
human or otherwise — to use the word " overlooked " except in con- 
nection with the personal pronoun. Had the English author 
whom we criticise used the personal pronoun in this instance, his 
meaning would have been clearer, and no other interpretation 
could have been put upon the somewhat Gladstonian sentence, 
but " Because my information is meagre it may have been over- 
looked." This would at least have expressed, in fewer words, the 
amount of knowledge that was — and perhaps still is — wanting. 
