83 
NOTES FROM NORTH SUTHERLAND.* 
(Read January 15th, 1907, by E. A. COCKAYNE.) 
The north-west corner of Sutherland, lying midway between the 
Orkneys and Shetlands to the east and the Hebrides to the west, ought 
to be interesting from the entomological point of view. The position 
of the country, and the fact that little has been written about its larger 
insects, are my excuses for reading these notes, made during a visit of 
only fourteen days, and therefore necessarily very incomplete. Un¬ 
fortunately I have not had time to look up recent records in the 
magazines, and where I mention that an insect has not been taken in 
Sutherland before, I mean that such record is not to be found in 
Meyrick’s handbook or Barrett’s British Lepidoptera. Notes in 
brackets on the northern limit of range previously recorded are those 
given by Barrett, whose nomenclature is also used. 
I will begin with a brief description of the district. Tongue, my 
headquarters, is a small village forty miles from the nearest railway 
station, from which one has to travel through a bleak and cheerless 
country of grassy hills, which rise gently on the western side and fall 
abruptly on the east. One travels for miles without seeing a single 
tree. 
The Kyle of Tongue, on which the village is situated, is a shallow 
inlet of the sea, into which the Kinloch river, the Allt Rhian and other 
streams pour their Avaters. It is protected at the mouth by the 
picturesque Rabbit Islands, and half Avay up is almost bridged by a 
long strip of sand which runs out from the Tongue woods. The 
western side is Ioav, bare and rocky; the eastern rises steeply from the 
Avater to a height of 400 to 500 feet, and is in places clothed AA'ith 
stunted lichen-coA r ered birch trees and, here and there, a rowan or 
aspen. Past the mouth of the Rhian the land is flat and cultRated as 
far as the Tongue woods. 
These are fairly extensive, and the trees are large. The lower part 
is leA r el and grassy, and consists chiefly of beech, Avych elm and lime. 
Further back it runs up a steep slope, on AA r kich many pines and 
mountain-ashes grow, and culminates at about 900 feet in a growth of 
small pines and open heathery moor. The Rhian is bordered by Ioav 
alders, rowans and salloAvs, and in places runs through woods of small 
birches. On the side farthest from the village are meadows with 
bracken and coarse grasses, and between these and the sea is a wood, 
An-garbh-chnoc, Avith pine, spruce, larch, roAvan, birch, beech and 
alder, on a hill about 400 feet high. Owing to our limited time we 
almost confined our search to the district described, which includes 
the most fertile, and some of the Avilder parts of the neighbourhood. 
On our first day, June 30th, Ave found numbers of lanrgeof Cleoceris 
vivdnalis on salloAvs near the Rhian, and took some of the largest, from 
Avhich Ave bred 27 imagines on July 29th, and the tA\ r o folloAving days. 
Compared Avith my Rannoch specimens the number of dark forms 
With plate presented by the author. 
