naturalists-from-scotland

"Tippu-Tib...told me that they usually kill several people, and have a grand feast, for the Wacusu are terrible cannibals. He then told me, amongst other stories, that long ago, when fighting near Maléla, they killed a great many of the enemy. The natives who were with him were cannibals, and not a body could be found next morning. (He tells me that two men will easily eat one man in a night.) He sent for water in the night to wash his hands and to drink, the water there being in a well. When it was brought, he could not make out why it stuck to his hands, and was so oily and bad to drink. Next day he and several Arabs went up to see what was the matter with the water, and there they saw a most horrible sight. The top of the water was all smeared with a thick layer of yellow fat, which was running over the side, and he found out that his natives had taken all the human meat to the well to wash it before eating. At the next place he camped by a stream, and made the natives camp below him. I told him that people at home generally believed that these were only "travellers' tales," as they are called in our country, or, in other words, lies. He then said something to an Arab called Ali, seated next him, who turned round to me and said, "Give me a bit of cloth, and see." I sent my boy for six handkerchiefs, thinking it was all a joke, and that they were not in earnest, but presently a man appeared, leading a young girl of about ten years old by the hand, and I then witnessed the most horribly sickening sight I am ever likely to see in my life. He plunged a knife quickly into her breast twice, and she tell on her face, turning over on her side. Three men then ran forward, and began to cut up the body of the girl; finally her head was cut off, and not a particle remained, each man taking his piece away down to the river to wash it. The most extraordinary thing was that the girl never uttered a sound, nor struggled, until she fell. Until the last moment, I could not believe that they were in earnest. I have heard many stories of this kind since I have been in this country, but never could believe them, and I never would have been such a beast as to witness this, but I could not bring myself to believe that it was anything save a ruse to get money out of me, until the last moment.The girl was a slave captured from a village close to this town, and the cannibals were Wacusu slaves, and natives of this place, called Mculusi. When I went home I tried to make some small sketches of the scene while still fresh in my memory, not that it is ever likely to fade from it. No one here seemed to be in the least astonished at it."

"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 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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"[Why do animals] undergo in the course of their growth a series of complicated changes, during which they acquire organs which have no function, and which, after remaining visible for a short time, disappear without leaving a trace . . . The explanation of such facts is obvious. The stage when the tadpole breathes by gills is a repetition of the stage when the ancestors of the frog had not advanced in the scale of development beyond a fish."