to the south. There is water, and, as the foot of Loch Lomond is reached, the industrial area which is but an extension of Glasgow.
Glasgow is fortunate in its landowners to the north. On both sides of Loch Lomond fair access is given to all, and every attempt is made to preserve the natural woodland and the forest fauna. The Loch Lomond-Trossachs area has priority as a projected national park area. The area would link up with the National Forest Park already established by the Forestry Commission west of Arrochar, and which now includes the privately-given peninsula between Loch Goil and Loch Long. This extremely broken stretch of Highland country, ironically called Argyll’s Bowling Green, is within a few miles of the busy industrial Clyde. The establishment of a national park, and the faithful implementation of the Town and Country Planning Act which is now in force in Scotland, should ensure to Glasgow an area of pristine beauty with a rich natural history, much of which yet awaits patient investigation.
THE CENTRAL HIGHLAND ZONE
This area gives the nearest approach to continental and alpine conditions that we have in Scotland. The southern boundary may be made a line drawn from Lochnagar to the head of Loch Lomond, including the high hills on the north side of Loch Tay. The western boundary would be a line from Loch Lomond through Ben Nevis to Carn Eige and Mam Soul, thence almost due east across the Great Glen at a point just south of Urquhart Castle. This northern line would continue from that point to Tomintoul, one of the highest inhabited villages in Scotland, at 1,280 feet; and the line from Tomintoul to Lochnagar could well form the short eastern boundary. The south-western and north-western corners of this arbitrarily delimited zone are the least typical, in that they lose the plateau-like quality of the Central Highlands proper, but on reflection I should not like to include the peaks round the head of Glen Lyon in the West Highland zone, nor do I think the triangle of country north of the Great Glen may rightly be said to have the sub-arctic-heath complex of vegetation like that of the Northern Highlands. Between 80 and 90 per cent of the ground in this central zone is above the 1,000-foot contour. Arable farming is scarcely practised except in the narrow straths. The farms of Glen Moriston constitute one of the incongruities of the north-western corner of our area, much more so than those of Cromdale and Boat of Garten on the northern edge east of the Spey, for these latter are typical upland farms. The slopes of the hills are mainly of good heather and after 2,500 feet become alpine desert.
The Central Highland zone has its particular interest for naturalists who may be specialists in some branches. There is the botanical field of the high tops, among which Ben Lawers, 3,984 feet, has always held a special place. The schistose of which this hill is composed breaks down easily, and there are exposures of other rocks as well, providing soil which allows a greater variety of alpine plants to grow than on some other summits. The richness of Ben Lawers is also due, probably, to the likelihood of the summit escaping the last glaciation.
The Cairngorm region is of special interest to ornithologists wishing to study the snow bunting and dotterel. The ptarmigan (Plate XVIIb) is common there and the golden eagle (Plate XIIIa) enjoys practical sanctuary, for even sheep-farming is absent from much of the area. The Cairngorm tops are our most considerable arctic relic. The ancient pine forests at the eastern and north-western foot of the Cairngorms are also a relic of a past age and contain the Scottish crested tit (Plate XV) and the Scottish crossbill. The entomologist also finds these forests of special interest. The central Highland area contains some of the biggest deer forests in Scotland, such as Blackmount in Breadalbane of over 80,000 acres (Pl. XV, p. 108), the Forest of Mar, which is almost as large, and the wonderful deer country between Loch Ericht and Loch Laggan, which includes Ben Alder, 3,757 feet.
Our central zone holds the upper reaches of three large river systems—the Dee which flows eastwards from the Cairngorms and the Grampians; the Spey which rises from tiny Loch Spey in the Corrieyairick Forest north of the high top of Creag Meagaidh above Loch Laggan; and the Rivers Garry, Tummel and Tay flowing southwards, joining and continuing as the Tay outside the central alpine zone. The much shorter River Spean which flows westward from Loch Laggan has now disappeared because of the erection of a hydro-electric dam and aqueducts at the foot of Loch Laggan. The Spey, rising at 1,142 feet on the backbone of Scotland, runs 120 miles in a north-easterly direction to the sea in the Moray Firth. It gathers its waters from the Monaliadh hills, from the Grampians and the Cairngorms, the largest area of long-snow-lying country in the Highlands. The River Truim, the Spey’s first large tributary, runs through Badenoch, one of the barest parts of the Highlands. It rises near the Pass of Drumochter, 1,500 feet, which takes the main road from Perth to Inverness. Badenoch has the appearance of a devastated countryside; an appearance partly due to nature and partly to the destructive hand of man several hundred years ago. This area was fought over many a time and bands of broken men were burnt out of their retreats just as the last wolves were a century or two later. The rock is a dull grey and apt to break down into a shaley scree. To my mind, the Forests of Drumochter and Gaick, a little to the east, are the most depressing part of the Highlands. The hills are big humps without individuality, there are screes but not fine cliff faces, and trees are few and far between. Even the weather has a habit of being leaden. The practice of burning heather is always obvious in that no hill face seems to bear an unbroken dark green surface of untouched heather.
West of the road, in the upper Spey Valley region and south of Loch Laggan, the hills become sharper and more shapely and there is a good deal of natural birch, among which are many stands of coniferous timber which in no way spoil the landscape. The Spey and the Truim join above Newtonmore, and from there until the Spey leaves the central zone, the straths and the slopes to over 1,250 feet hold large stands of planted coniferous timbers. There is still plenty of natural birch and juniper scrub as far as Aviemore and beyond. We are in a very beautiful area which is one of the most popular holiday resorts in Scotland for those who like quiet, a mixture of woodland and high hill and a sharp healthy climate of low summer rainfall. At Aviemore the Valley of the Spey widens, and if the observer climbs the wooded hillock of Craigellachie south-west of the village, he will see the old Scots pine forests of Rothiemurchus (Plate 16) and Glenmore as the floor of a great basin formed by the Cairngorms and the little range of hills to the north which culminates in Meall a’ Bhuachaille, 2,654 feet. Loch Morlich (Plate 2) lies in the middle of the basin and its bright sandy shores at the eastern end are visible. The dark green of the timber stretches through the pass or bealach at the foot of Meall a’ Bhuachaille into the Forest of Abernethy (Plate 17). The old trees have suffered more heavily here and have been replaced by plantations of Scots pine, but Abernethy is still beautiful and the birch and juniper take away the grim formality of the solid stands of planted timber.
The Cairngorms, which form the heart and the most extreme alpine conditions of our central zone, are fairly easily reached from Aviemore by means of the track and the pass known as the Lairig Ghru. The Lairig splits the granite massif of the Cairngorms into two halves at a height of 2,750 feet, and is the most spectacular part of the Cairngorms seen from Aviemore or farther west of the Spey. Ben Macdhui, 4,296 feet (Plate 20), is on the east side and Braeriach and Cairntoul on the west side of the pass. The summit of the Lairig is also the county boundary between Inverness-shire and Aberdeenshire. Just south of the summit are the very small lochans known as the Pools of Dee. The water is extremely clear and probably originates from springs. This is the source of the Dee which in twelve miles becomes a considerable river at the Chest of Dee. By time the Linn of Dee is reached (the uppermost limit of salmon in the river) we are into forest again, mostly planted Scots pine until we get below Braemar, where Ballochbuie still holds a fine show of the old pines. These are part of the Royal property at Balmoral.
The Grampian Hills south of the Cairngorms give a sense of vastness. Ben Iurtharn, 3,424 feet; Glas Thulachan, 3,445 feet; and the tops of Beinn a’ Ghlo, 3,671 feet; all these and many another 3,000-footer can be easily climbed on a pony, and once on those clean, smooth summits the pony can be let out to a gallop, so different are they from the sharp peaks, the broken ground and the boggy approaches to the high hills of the West. This country is remote from everywhere and since, once there, it is difficult to get lower than 1,500 feet, there is a great exhilaration in movement
