Non Fiction Authors From Scotland

"In general appearance the is an extremely large and powerful fellow, with a beautiful head and speaking countenance, in which sagacity is blended with nobility, and a body of great symmetry, combining, one might say, the agility of the with the strength of the ."

"I have dozens of well-authenticated anecdotes of cats who are very expert at fishing. I have, myself, watched a cat by the banks of a stream, until I have seen him dive into the the water, and emerge almost immediately with a large in his mouth. Cats who fish, generally belong to s, or are bred and reared somewhere near a river. They not only catch fish of all sorts, but even s; often springing many feet off the bank after prey of this kind, and even diving under to secure it. In Scotland cats often attack and destroy large quantities of salmon in small streams, in the spawning season."

"Every child knows how fond cats are of hunting and catching mice, but no cat any respectability would think of confining her attention to mice alone. The very presence of a cat about a house will usually suffice to keep these destructive pests at bay; and if one should pop out of its hole, it knows, or ought to know, what to expect."

"Three days at , and up anchor again; our next place of call being . Every one has heard of the , who tried to beat the British but didn't, ... was caught and chained ... to a rock somewhere in the middle of the sea ... The rock was St. Helena, and a very beautiful rock it is too, hill and and thriving town, its mountain sides tilled and its s and s containing many a fertile little farm. It is the duty of every one who touches the shores of this far-famed island to make a pilgrimage to .... both sides of the road all the way to the tomb are strewn with , empty of course, and at the grave itself there are s of them; and the same is the case at every place which has visit4ed, or where English foot has ever trod."

"Very few of the old s interfere with the duties of their assistants, but there be men who seem to think you have merely come to the service to learn, not to practise your profession, and therefore they treat as mere students, or at the best hobble-de-hoy doctors. Of this class was Dr. Gruff, a man whom I would back against the whole profession for , , , or ; but who, I rather suspect, never prescribed a dose of , , or in his life."

"When I was a little boy at school, floundering through Herodotus, and getting double doses of fum-fum daily for my Anabasis—for my old teacher, when he couldn't get enough Greek into one end of me, took jolly good care to put it in at the other—there was no man I had greater respect for than Alexander the Great, owing to his having done that business so neatly. I practiised afterwards on the dominie's tawse (i.e., the fum-fum strap); I tied a splendid knot on it, and then cut it through with a jackknife; but woe's me! the plaguy dominie caught me in the very act, and—and I had to take my meals standing for a week."

"Frustra ego te laudo, frustra me, Zoile, laedis: Nemo mihi credit, Zoile, nemo tibi."

"Mentitur veros facies tibi picta colores, Et speculi mendax te tibi imago referit. In digito annellus mentitur aëneus aurum, Mentitur gemmam vitrea gemma probam. Quicquid contigerit re cum mendacia discat, Miremur linguam dicere falsa tuam?"

"He remained a staunch supporter of the old order during the Reformation era, and being an independent thinker, with feelings and views very similar to those of the 'old catholic' school of this century, tried to stem the reformation of the church from within."

"We had been dressing the wee lassie one day is a graceful fairy-like of Aunt Ellen's devising, and maternal pride gave utterance to some (foolish) remarks about the child's appearance. Very sweetly came the rebuke from childhood's wisdom. "Yes, but it was very good of God to make me pretty.""

"I hear you're such a lazy bird, You cannot build a ; Perhaps you could, if you would try— We ought to do our best. The little bird that told me this Suspected something worse,— That you neglect your little ones, And put them out to nurse. Oh, Cuckoo! if this story's true, I think you're much to blame. Then talk no more about yourself; Go, hide yourself, for shame!"

"Winds are raging fierce and high, Lurid lightnings wreathe the sky, Thunders roll and night is nigh, Ships 'mid storm-toss'd breakers lie At the ocean's will. Little ones there are who weep, Wives who weary vigils keep, When all else have gone to sleep. Father! to yon angry deep "Say Thou, Peace, be still.""

"... The Corbie (or Raven) is sacred to the All-Father. The Katyogle (or Owl) is consecrated to the goddess of wisdom. ... I have too much respect for the Corbie and Katyogle to dwell in detail upon their . I care not for their "," according to the scientist. The and species to which they belong influence me not one whit. Why—when I know on the authority of a Shetland witch, that the Corbie can assume any form he pleases, and that the Katyogle is the inhabitant of another world in disguise–why should I trouble my spirit with assigning to either a place in the Darwinian circle?"

"An incantation against nightmare was once used over me by old Mam-Kirsty famed for her witchcraft."

"Horny projections which look more like teeth are found in the beaks of a special group of ducks represented in Britain by and , sometimes known as "sawbills". In these birds the beak is narrow and the "teeth" are used for gripping fish."

"If you are fortunate to have the chance to examine a recently dead bird, even one brought home from the poulterer with intact, spend a little time examining the s carefully and note down various points of interest."

"Macdonald selects twelve aspects of the life and behaviour of birds, illustrating them with Australian examples. Topics covered are Territorial Behaviour, , Population Problems, Post-Breeding Activities, , Distribution, Habitats and Adaptations, , Other Important Features, Various Systems, the Senses, and Variation and . The level of detail on each subject is well suited to the intended audience and avoids both superficiality and excessive detail. Indeed, beginners are far from the only birdwatchers who would profit from reading this book. The list of references, although short, is useful and reasonably comprehensive and would give the interested reader a useful introduction to the literature on a particular topic."

"The may easily be mistaken for a male in flight. They are identical in size and are similarly barred below. The illusion is often fostered in late summer by young cuckoos being seen in flight with their foster-parents, much smaller birds ..."

"When appointed to the in 1935 he was placed in the Bird Room, where he started as Assistant Keeper and retired in 1968 as Senior Scientific Officer in charge of the Bird Room and Deputy Keeper of the Zoology Department. Apart from war service with the , his entire career was dedicated to traditional museum ornithology. He ran collecting expeditions to South Sudan in 1938–1939 and South West Africa in 1950–1951, each substantially enhancing African collections in the Museum; that led to publication of a comprehensive report on the birds of the region. ... His professional career culminated in a sponsored mostly by Major Harold Hall, an Australian philanthropist. That was the last systematic collecting of Australian birds by an overseas institute, collecting in all parts of the continent and enriching the British Museum collection of Australian birds by some 6,500 specimens (skins, skeletons, and fluid). The leader of the first expedition in 1962–1963, Jim’s party discovered a new species of bird () in . In that expedition, his wife Betty accompanied him as doctor and caterer for the team."

"One of the areas whose birds have been given rather less attention than most is the arid western regions of South Africa. For various reasons it has been, and still is, an inhospitable country, in spite of the kindly disposition of its thinly scattered population. Its political history, at times somewhat turbulent; its desolate and fog-bound coastline, now made doubly inapproachable because of protective measures against illicit diamond prospecting; its vast hinterland of and ; and its own arid mountains and plains have discouraged travellers and ornithological pursuits. Although the birds of this region have been studied relatively infrequently most of the species represented have been known for a long time. The first ornithological survey of any importance took place as early as 1783-5 when the French naturalist, , made his second great journey ‘into the interior parts of Africa from the ’."

"is a culture of the twentieth century possessing its own philosophical, ethical and scientific frame which is distinct from those of agriculture, and other producer . In the latter, conservation is directed towards the creation and maintenance of the quality and quantity of the product, be it cereal, wood pulp or automobiles; in the former, nature conservation is directed towards the maintenance of numbers of different species distributed in different assemblages of natural or semi-natural type and towards the care of geological and physiographical features."

"The have survived for 50 years without interference by man and maintain high density on rich maritime pastures heavily manured by s. They are a obtained from a cross between old Scottish shortwool and early blackface sheep. There is a population of about 400 on about 55 of pasture and the rams and ewes (with lamb and yearling rams) run in separate groups. The survival of rams is poor compared with ewes with an adult sex-ratio of about 10 ewes to 1 ram. Numbers of sheep fluctuate between 330 and 460 without causing sheet erosion, landslipping and disruption of the vegetation. The conservation plan for Boreray rests on continued non-interference with the sheep and no sheep should be introduced to the island."

"The 1870s saw the awakening of a desire among scientists to become more highly organized. The influence of Huxley and Darwin among others had spread north and the tangible outcome was the botanical papers by and (1882-84) and (1898-1909). Within this upsurge of interest came the and Buckley Fauna (1888) and work on the freshwaters by Scott (1891), followed by the Bathymetrical Survey of the Scottish Freshwater Lochs by and (1910). This was perhaps the first great work of the modern scientific era in the and is still the baseline for work on freshwaters, to which little has since been added."

"The return of the s to nest successfully on a Scots fir on in 1959 marked the beginning of a remarkable record of success by the in osprey protection. The osprey, handsome, inoffensive, living entirely on fish, nested in Scotland 100 years ago."

"The ', a true mountain dweller, is sometimes the golden eagle's prey. On the I have frequently seen an eagle chasing, in play, a covey or pack of ptarmigan, and seeming to find satisfaction in the bewildering and aimless flight of the terrified birds."

"... is the home of rare s, one of which, ', is found nowhere else in Britain. Although rare birds are protected by , rare plants have no protection afforded them, perhaps because such protection would be impossible to enforce."

"Mr. Seton Gordon is one of the few men of education who have been content to live their life in the rather than earn what many would consider to be an easier and better living elsewhere. The result is that, being a life-long observer, he knows more about the of a remote region than almost anyone else. He has preferred to diffuse his wide knowledge in the form of popular books rather than as systematic papers, a fact for which many general readers are undoubtedly thankful. We of a younger generation of workers may be sorry that he does not give us a or which he alone could write and which would preserve for us the great variety of knowledge which his sensitive, inquiring mind has gathered."

"For the lover of the grand in nature the mountains have singular fascination. The children of the mountain, too—the stern and impassive and the gentle —seem to have instilled into them the true spirit of the mist, and thus appeal to the nature lover more forcibly than the denizens of less romantic regions. The mountains attract at every season of the year—in winter, when their corries are buried deep under their snowy covering; in spring, when this snowy mantle has been broken by the strengthening sun, aided by soft breezes from the south; and in summer, when an occasional snowfield lingering here and there still reminds one of the winter that is past, but when the corries are clothed with grass of an exquisite green."

"Many a time I have sat up all night to take notes on the , which, in this part of the world, commence to sing considerably earlier than their English relations. In June, the and are often in song before 2 o'clock a.m., while the s and s by the river never cease to call all night long."

"There is no native population in , for no s, es, or even s, have ever settled there. Three hundred years ago the bays and seas of West Spitsbergen were a favourite whale-fishing ground to which most of the seafaring nations of Europe sent fleets of s, but the " " is long extinct in Spitsbergen waters, and the whaling industry has now disappeared. Spitsbergen was discovered by the Dutch in 1596; whales were found by in 1607, and by 1620 the whale-hunting was at its height."

"I think it is possible to tell, by the flight of and , whether they are seeking to escape their hereditary enemy, the eagle, or their more recent but much more deadly enemy, man. As a general rule, when the eagle is the cause of disturbance the grouse fly at a greater height above ground and their flight is more precipitate and aimless than when man is the cause of alarm. It is of interest to realise how strong is the hereditary instinct of dread felt towards the eagle, and in obedience to this instinct grouse will cheerfully face in great numbers a whole line of guns which must spell death to them, rather than approach the locality where the eagle has been spied. I was travelling on the recently, from to , and just at the county march, where the line borders on the 1500 feet level, I saw a grouse cross the line above the train, flying high and with a distinctive rocking flight. I was almost certain that an eagle, and not the Highland express, was the cause of alarm, and sure enough, on looking out of the opposite window, I saw the enemy there sailing far off above the top of a neighbouring hill."

"Beyond , we passed the mouth of Glen Beg, where the last of the great had his farm."

"Mrs. Mitichison brings on her stage, and gives one the feeling of that bleak and terrible greatness. The impression which Cæsar has left on history is just the impression he made on his contemporaries. The shadow of a vastness had fallen coldly across them. Mrs. Mitchison knows how to make it fall across us. She has, as it were by miracle, got back into the air and mood of the time she writes about: she creates, and recreates. The splendor and the mystery come easy to her."

"... Obviously my chief authority is Xenophon's ; if I can induce anyone to read this (the Loeb translation is very vivid on the whole) and get as much pleasure out of it as I did, then I shall be — as the good books say — amply rewarded. For actual history I have gone to Cavaignac or . ... 's The Greek Commonwealth is a good book to begin on."

"My father was writing one paper after another in conjunction with various people, , , Butterfield, , and others, but especially ..."

"The first thing about science is asking questions; the next—and this includes the bulk of what is called scientific work—is measuring the knowledge and finding new standards of measurement; and the final thing is putting all this knowledge together."

"It occurred to the writer, a year ago, in thinking about modern Ireland, to wonder what light the record of Cæsar’s Gallic wars might throw on the causes of the present discontents. , , —were these leaders of the Gauls like the leaders of the Gael to-day? Did they feel the same blinding passion of nationalism? Were they, too, distracted by feuds and harassed by jealousies? Is the Celtic temper an undeviating possession of the centuries ; and is the character of a stock inherited as surely and as inevitably as the colour of eyes and hair ? To find an answer to these questions it would have been necessary to read those later books of the , to which (however skilled we may become in the structure of the bridge which Cæsar threw over the Rhine) few, if any, of us ever attain in our schoolboy days. For such reading no opportunity occurred; but the fortunate chance of an old friendship brought another solution. I was privileged to read the manuscript of Mrs. Mitchison’s work, and the answer came, irradiated by an historical imagination, and animated by a living sympathy, as I read."

"... readers, remember that my account of what was happening in Sparta or Athens or even Egypt, is all based on real history, but the view was moulded by what I—and many another person—was thinking in the Europe of those days, with Mussolini and his fascists in Italy and already the shadow of Hitler in Germany. If I was writing this book now I might treat my characters and my story differently. But I cannot be certain, even of that."

"... are puddings and pies, roasting and boiling, dusting and washing, or even the rearing and educating her children, so entirely to engross her attention, that her heart and mind can never expand beyond her own little domestic circle? Nay, if her mind never does so expand, will she be able properly to regulate the concerns even of that little circle?"

"No pure and noble-minded woman can long love affectionately, and submit passively to, a vicious and dissipated, — or even to a good and virtuous tyrant, — without having her own mind greatly deteriorated."

"The grand plea for woman sharing with man all the advantages of education is, that every rational being is worthy of cultivation, for his or her own individual sake. The first object in the education of every mind ought to be its own development."

"To leave the liberty of one-half of the human race at the mercy of the convenience of the other, amounts to an annihilation of the rights of that half."

"We shall be disposed to acknowledge that woman's influence has been sufficient to obtain her justice, when it has obtained for her ... perfectly just and equal rights with the other sex. When this is the case, we shall expect to see each woman wakened up into a sense of her individual responsibilities and duties: finding herself no longer classed with children and idiots, we may reasonably expect to see her rousing herself up, and applying, with renewed energy, to all her duties ..."

"... the influence of woman — where any freedom of social intercourse is allowed between the sexes — is highly favourable to civilisation. She advances refinement and civilisation, and is, in turn, advanced by them."

"... if we take politics in the large and high sense in which it stands for patriotism and philanthropy, the assertion that an interest in it is out of place in the breast of the very gentlest of her sex, — in other words, that it is improper and unbecoming in a woman to take a deep interest in the affairs of her country and of humanity, — is made with more boldness and confidence, than regard to reason and truth."

"Alas! that Scottish maid should sing The combat where her lover fell! That Scottish Bard should wake the string, The triumph of our foes to tell!"

"In Vishnu’s lotus-foot alone Confide! His power shall ne’er decay, When tumbles every earthly throne, And mortal glory fades away."

"Primary sources did not come into existence to satisfy the curiosity of historians. They derive 'natural', 'organically', as it were, or, more straightforwardly, 'in the ordinary course of events', from human beings and groups of human beings, in the past society being studied, living their lives, worshipping, decision-making, adjudicating, fornicating, going about their business or fulfilling their vocations, recording, noting, communicating, as they go, very occasionally, perhaps, with an eye on the future, but generally in accordance with immediate needs and purposes. The technical skills of the historian lie in sorting these matters out, in understanding how and why a particular source came into existence, how relevant it is to the topic under investigation and, obviously, the particular codes or language in accordance with which the particular source comes into being as a concrete artefact."

"If the historian finds himself resorting to metaphor or cliché, that may well be a warning that things have not been sufficiently worked out, and substantiated, to be conveyed in plain simple prose."

"Historians do not, as too many of my colleagues keep mindlessly repeating, “reconstruct” the past. What historians do is produce knowledge about the past, or, with respect to each individual, fallible historian, produce contributions to knowledge about the past. Thus the best and most concise definition of history is: “The bodies of knowledge about the past produced by historians, together with everything that is involved in the production, communication of, and teaching about that knowledge."