The Fauna of the Tay District

Abstract

WITH the appearance of this handsome work the author has the satisfaction of having completed the tenth volume of “A Vertebrate Fauna of Scotland” and we have great pleasure in congratulating him on having progressed thus far with a task stupendous enough to have frightened any man from attempting. Not that Mr. Harvie-Brown has written the whole, or anything like the whole, of the preceding nine volumes. On the contrary, he was associated at the commencement of his work with the late Mr. T. E. Buckley, who contributed largely to several of the volumes; while the second volume on the birds of Iona and Mullwas written by the late Mr. H. D. Graham, and the late Mr. H. A. Macpherson was joint-author (with the editor in chief) of the one on the fauna of the North-west Highlands and Skye. The volume on Shetland is, again, the work of Messrs. Evans and Buckley. Nevertheless, the burden of the work as a whole has been borne by Mr. Harvie-Brown, and if he live to complete his task the author of the present volume will have accomplished for the whole of Scotland what his coadjutor Macpherson did for “Lakeland”; and this, too, in a style which few can equal and none surpass. For Mr. Harvie-Brown is not only an exceedingly careful and industrious investigator, who will never let go a trail until he has hunted it to the end, and will never rest satisfied until he has completely refuted a doubtful assertion, but also a writer gifted with the power of putting facts in a pleasant light and of interesting his readers (who we hope are many) from start to finish. He is, in fact, both an accomplished and elegant writer and an enthusiastic and painstaking field-naturalista combination which can scarcely fail to produce attractive and trustworthy work, as it has done in the volume now before us.

A Fauna of the Tay Basin and Strathmore.

By J. A. Harvie-Brown. Pp. lxxxvi + 377; plates and maps. (Edinburgh: D. Douglas, 1906.) Price 30s.