and J. L. Johnston (1980) and The Natural History of Orkney by R. J. Berry (1985), both continuing the tradition of a broad approach to natural history combined with an expert background of the fauna, flora, environments and history of the islands. An outstanding need in the series has been an account of The Hebrides; the islands lying to the west of the mainland of Scotland, north of the Mull of Kintyre, including the great islands of Mull and Skye and the ‘Long Island’, from the Butt of Lewis to Barra Head of the Outer Hebrides. The diversity of the landscapes in these islands is vast, from the mountainous and fresh scenery of Skye to the ancient lake-filled plateaus of North Uist and the coastal machairs, all with their characteristic fauna and flora. Few know these islands and their natural history better than the authors of this new volume in the series. J. Morton Boyd and Ian L. Boyd both have long experience of the Hebridean islands. Morton Boyd has been intimately concerned with natural history and conservation in the Hebrides since he joined the Nature Conservancy in Scotland in 1957, continuing with the Nature Conservancy Council until recently. Ian Boyd is an authority on sea mammals, especially the Atlantic grey seal, that symbol of marine life in the Hebrides. At a time when issues of wildlife and its future are rightly being more actively considered than ever, the Editors welcome this volume on an area of such diverse and intrinsic natural history interest.
A visit to Skye when I was six years of age made a deep impression in my mind—wild mountainous scenery, thatched houses, and seagulls over the stern of the paddle steamer Fusileer as she plied the narrow waters between Portree and Kyle of Lochalsh. Little did I know then what a large part the Hebrides were to play in my later life, nor how impressed Dr Samuel Johnson had also been by the same country some two centuries previously—
This (the passage to Raasay) now is the Atlantick. If I should tell at a tea-table in London, that I have crossed the Atlantick in an open boat, how they’d shudder, and what a fool they’d think me to expose myself to such danger … This (the Hebrides) is truly the patriarchal life: this is what we came to find.
It was not until 1948 that I returned to these islands, seeking a new outlook in life after my War Service. I found it in natural history, mountaineering, island exploration, and scholarship. The first three of these were nicely attuned to my natural instinct for an exciting and satisfying life. The last meant a great deal of hard work for me, but my enthusiasm was fired by two men of greater intellect than my own: they were my professor in zoology at Glasgow University, C. M. (later Sir Maurice) Yonge, leader of research on the Great Barrier Reef of Australia, and my mentor in nature conservation, F. (later Sir Frank) Fraser Darling, pioneer ecologist in the West Highands and Islands. Each in his way had successfully combined the outward-bound and intellectual elements of life which I have espoused for as long as I can remember.
It could be said that this book has been forty years in the making. I would not have been convinced that I should attempt it had I not already collaborated with Fraser Darling in the revision of his Natural History in the Highlands and Islands (1947). That work, Number 6 in the New Naturalist Series, was highly popular among students, naturalists and lay readers with an appreciation of wild country, and an awareness of its effect upon people. However, it did receive criticism from academics, who saw the work as lacking in authority and accuracy. One eminent scientist wrote:
Clearly a book like this is exceptionally difficult to write, and most of us would not have the courage to attempt it … (however) … we might well have been worse off with the opposite extreme, a prosy compendium of incredible dullness, richly documented with footnotes.
I had used it as a student, and when I came to revise it I did so without destroying the flow of Fraser Darling’s fine prose. Working from the inside, I could see the great advantages of having the book written by a single author, not just for the writing style, but also for the artistry of compilation behind a single comprehensive work containing the best fruits of many. The alternative is to compile a natural history with many experts contributing one or more chapters in a symposium-type volume, but that is a different type of book altogether from those produced by Fraser Darling (1947), Yonge (1949), Pearsall (1950), and others in the New Naturalist Series. Respectively, these authors were at once expert in one field, and naturalists of broad erudition and experience—interpreters of the broad spectrum, able to see and describe nature in the round.
This is the concluding work in a more extensive endeavour over the last ten years to describe the natural environment of the Hebrides, which in this book embraces all the islands lying off the western seaboard of Scotland, between the Mull of Kintyre and Cape Wrath. The islands of Lewis, Harris, North Uist, Benbecula, South Uist, and Barra and their outliers are the Outer Hebrides; all others, including Skye, the Small Isles (Canna, Rum, Eigg, and Muck), Mull, Tiree, Coll, Jura, Islay, Colonsay, Gigha and their satellites, are the Inner Hebrides. In 1977 and 1981, with the help of others, I organised two symposia on the Natural Environment of the Outer and Inner Hebrides respectively, in the Royal Society of Edinburgh. In doing so I made up my mind to follow the publication of the resultant symposia volumes with a more popular work which would reach a much wider public. These tomes (Boyd, 1979; Boyd and Bowes, 1983), and a major paper in the same series on the non-marine invertebrate fauna of the Outer Hebrides by A. R. Waterston (1981), were useful source works containing 67 papers by some 94 authors. The volume on the Outer Hebrides was followed by Agriculture and Environment in the Outer Hebrides, a report by Dr John Hambrey (1986) for the Nature Conservancy Council, which has also served as a ready source of information.
The writer of a natural history of such a diverse environment as the Hebrides is faced with a vast span in geological age, an enormous number of distinct forms of life, all of which are specially adapted to their living quarters, a wide range of temperate maritime habitats, and a group of human influences and impacts on the environment, rooted in Celtic and Norse cultures, strikingly different from those in mainland Britain. This great assembly is positively dynamic. It is not sufficient, therefore, to provide a ‘snapshot’ of nature today, but also to apply the dimension of history and unrelenting change. To encompass the work in a single volume was firstly a matter of eclecticism and presentation of part of the available knowledge; secondly, of consultation with experts over each chapter; and thirdly, the incorporation of these experts’ comments.
The objective is a wholesome natural history. The chapters do not stand on their own, but are interdependent. They are not specialist essays written without regard to the total ecological purpose of the book or the readership to which it is directed. I am deeply aware that its shape and content are a matter of my personal choice—I found it difficult to decide what should be excluded, and there are many studies which deserve mention and which, in the hands of another compiler, would find a place. The fact that some works are restricted to a mention in the Bibliography does not necessarily reflect their importance in natural history.
I required a co-author to assist me in the review of the literature, primary drafting and editing of my text, the incorporation of expert comment, and the application to the work of the judgment and taste of a younger scientist. I did not require to look further than my second son, Ian Lamont Boyd. He made his first visit to the Hebrides in infancy, and came face to face with his study animal, the grey seal, for the first time on Gunna at the age of 19 months. Throughout his boyhood he was continuously on foot with me in the islands and later, like myself, had the benefit of a broadly-based degree in natural science from a Scottish university. He was awarded First Class Honours in zoology at Aberdeen, followed by a Doctorate at Cambridge with a thesis on the reproductive biology of the grey seal. Ian is now in charge of seal research in the British Antarctic Survey.
Stark rocks stand in the sea:
Curved islands against the sunset.
Oh Hebrides! What are you telling me?
I know wherein thy strength is set.
