BOOKS.
A FAUNA OF THE MORAY BASIN.* THE name of Mr. Hay vie-Brown is well known in the zoological world as an energetic field-naturalist, and this is a very valuable and interesting contribution to the natural history of the British Isles. The work is one of a series of volumes by the same authors, each dealing with separate parts of Scotland. The district included in the present volume is large in size and varied in nature. It embraces all the country drained by the rivers which flow into the Moray Firth between the Ord of Caithness and Cairnbulg, in North- East Aberdeenshire, thus including the greater part of the three large northern Scotch counties of Sutherland, Rose, and Inverness, as well as the smaller ones of Banff, Moray, and Nairn, and a portion of Cromarty. More roughly speaking, this is the north-eastern corner of Scotland, having the town of Inverness for a centre, and deeply indented along its coast-line by the Moray Firth.
The work begins with an elaborate topographical survey of the district, and a description of its physical features, to appreciate which (as well as the minutely detailed account of the faunal distribution) some knowledge of the locality is really necessary. There is, however, an admirable map at the end of the second volume. These volumes are only concerned with the vertebrates, but the district, as might be supposed from its varied nature and the extent of its unculti- vated or wooded surface, has a tolerably rich fauna. It is, however, with a certain feeling of regret that the lover of wild life notices how many species are described as being rapidly diminishing or nearly extinct. The advance of man, the preservation of game, the cutting down of trees, the draining of marshes, the inclosure of uncultivated parts. all mean the • A Fauna of tho Moray Basin. By J. A. Hat-vie-Crown and Th zums E. Buckley. 2 vole. Ed nburgh : David Douglas.
extermination of many animals, harmless along with harmful species. It is useless, perhaps, to lament this ; but we have a feeling of sympathy with the old-fashioned country gentleman who, after declaiming against the railways which were fast turning the country into a gigantic gridiron, admitted that they had done one good thing,—they had increased the number of foxes. His explanation was that, since the use of coal had become universal, people had ceased cutting down the woods which afforded the necessary cover for that sacred animal, and we should like to think the same thing applied to other /*era naturm.
It is rather interesting to analyse the lists given by our authors, and to compare them with the fauna of the whole of the British Isles. To begin with the mammals (including, we may remind our readers, the whales and porpoises), we find forty-two species recorded in the Moray Basin area, whilst there are eighty-one species of mammals which in- habit Great Britain. Of the bats, strange to say, only three out of a possible fourteen species are mentioned ; but very possibly further researches might add to the number. Of the insectivore, on the other hand, the whole British list is repre- sented by the hedgehog, the mole, the common, the lesser, and the water shrew.
Of the eight British carnivora, all are found,—namely, the wild cat, fox, marten, weasel, stoat, polecat, otter, and badger. The wild cat has rapidly decreased, though it still exists in scattered places. There can be little doubt that many so- called wild cats which are shot are merely house-cats who have taken to the woods, and whose offspring soon revert to the grey-streaked colour and short, thick-tailed form of their original ancestors. Possibly the coloured cats which thus take to the woods are sooner noticed and shot by keepers than their tabby relations, and thus have less chance in the struggle for life of propagating a coloured race. Our authors are inclined to think that the forests of Glenmoriston and Portclair are the last strongholds of the wild cat in the district, and probably in Great Britain. Other authorities, we believe, who have given much study to the subject, hold that the genuine wild cat, such as undoubtedly still exists in the East of Europe, has long been extinct in Britain, and that all the recent records are those of the streaked variety of the domestic cat run wild.
In Scotland, whert ulpicide is not a crime,-and fierce war is waged against the foxs-,L1L-1..ttanimal still holds its own in the hilly districts, but is said rare:: to descend to the cultivated parts. The marten maintains a pree,e'rio.ns_ footing among the pine-woods, and in places where steel-ix:al:Isere not systematically set for rabbits. But it is a wandering creature, and not so very long ago a single specimen fell into the jaws of the Crawley and Horsham hounds in Sussex. The polecat also is described as very rare if not almost extinct. The otter, as an enemy of the salmon, is similarly persecuted ; but it is said that its numbers are not diminishing at such a rapid rate. So, too, the badger, like the otter, was abundant and widely distributed thirty years ago over regions where now it is unknown.
The smaller mammals naturally have a better chance of escaping death at the hand of man, and of the thirteen rodents in this country twelve are found in Moray, and most are fairly abundant. The squirrel, the little harvest-mouse, the wood-mouse, the house-mouse, the brown rat, and three kinds of vole can hold their own. The black rat, once the only British species, bas been driven off or destroyed by the larger brown race. Our authors mention places that were overrun by them when one of their friends was a boy. His father paid him so much for every one he killed. He pro- duced their tails, and the little mammal was gradually getting scarcer. To keep up the breed (and his income) he used to cut off the tails and let the old she-rats go again. His in- genious device seems to have failed, for the black rat is now apparently extinct in the district. The hare is fast decreasing under the Ground Game Act ; and this is so all over England to such an extent that proposals have been made to give the County Councils power of declaring a "close" time in places where the danger of total extermination appeared imminent. The mountain-hare is likewise decreasing, but this, strangely enough, is attributed to the golden eagles, and not to man. Last among rodents comes the rabbit, and, needless to say, for once we come to an increasing species, for our authors inform us "that the first rabbits seen in Moray were a pair
or two on the links at Lossiemouth about 1750, and they were supposed to have escaped from a foreign vessel in the harbour."
The wild ox being now extinct except in Chillingham and one or two other parks, there are the three kinds of deer. Of the red-deer our authors say :-
"A hundred years ago, although the red-deer was perhaps as widely distributed as it now is, it certainly was by no means as abundant ; and we believe we are right in saying that the greatest. - increase has taken place within the last thirty years or even in a leas space of time, when, owing to the decline in the value of sheep, turning the sheep-farms into deer-forests became more profitable to the landowners We quite well remember some twenty or twenty-five years ago, that a • Royal' was a com- parative rarity, and the shooting of one was mentioned with some degree of pride in the local papers. In those days some eight or ten Royals,' perhaps, would be sent to Inverness to be stuffed,. and the number of heads of all kinds received by the late Mr.. Macleay [a well known stuffer] would not be very large, Now, this is changed. The heads are becoming in many places much better, both in quality as well as the number of points. 'Royals' can be counted almost by the score ; and there are always a dozen or more over that number, occasionally bearing as many as. fifteen or sixteen points. The number of heads sent in is now enormous, Mr. Macleay in the season of 1892 receiving over five- hundred, and most of these were from the north-west side of the Caledonian Canal. Of course, there are many heads that go else- where to be preserved; some sportsmen only preserve one or two of the very best trophies of the season, perhaps out of sixty or seventy stags killed, so that the number of deer shot each season. through the Highlands must be something enormous, especially/ when we remember in addition that through the winter the- foresters are engaged in killing the full complements of hinds."
The roe-deer is very abundant in all the lower wooded parts- of the area, and the same may be said of the fallow-deer,. except that the herds are generally confined to enclosed parks_ Turningto the birds, there can be no doubt that a deep in- dentation of the coast-line, such as the Moray Firth, per- ceptibly affects the distribution of many species. Herr Heinrich Gatke, in his work on the ornithology of the islan& of Heligoland, has shown that birds on migration pass at very varying and often at vast altitudes. Such as travel at great heights are not affected by the, comparatively speaking, shallow depressions or raised mountains of our country. Many, far- beyond our sight, speed on their journey without waiting to- rest or to feed on the way, and seem impelled by some irresistible force to complete the distance between their summer and winter quarters in one long sustained flights often of hundreds and even thousands of miles. It is, how- ever, the lower travelling strata of migrants which are in- fluenced by the contours of the coast-line. The great bird. wave which enters the Moray Firth is caught as it were in a funnel ; when the entrance to the river Ness is reached narrower space is formed, catching the compressed flocks of migrants and leading them onwards. Many detachments escape from the pressure by way of the valleys to the south, but upon the north side there are fewer avenues of escape. So the migrants spread in a widening fan inland, moving up. the lateral glens. Our authors believe that when the whole- faunas of our great watersheds are more fully worked out than they can claim to be at present, the richest faunas will always- be found along the lines of the deepest, and at the same time widest, depressions and across the lowest watersheds. This is, perhaps, little more than saying that the bird-waves, when they strike the coast, like a stream of water follow the lines- of least resistance. There are of course fluctuations de- pendent upon meteorological conditions, which cause extra- ordinary departures from the usual law, and explain the occurrences of species far out of their usual tracks.
The golden eagle our authors describe as not uncommon, in all mountainous districts, especially in the deer-forests, where it is generally preserved. This is a gratifying account, for not long ago there seemed a serious danger that this king- of birds would cease to be a resident of our islands. For obvious reasons precise localities are not given, but there is
abundant evidence of many breeding-sites, and the bird if not increasing is by no means decreasing. There seems a more- likely prospect that the osprey may become extinct, for there- are but three or four breeding.sites of this bird in the whole.
of Scotland, and it seems singularly sensitive to disturbance. Let us hope that the medals awarded by the Zoological Society to those who have exerted themselves for the protec- tion of the ospreys may have good result, and with this hope we must end our notice of a book which cannot fail to interest every naturalist and sportsman.
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