The Highlands Controversy is a rich and perceptive account of the third and last major dispute in nineteenth-century geology stemming from the work of Sir Roderick Murchison. The earlier Devonian and Cambrian-Silurian controversies centered on whether the strata of Devon and Wales should be classified by lithological or paleontological criteria, but the Highlands dispute arose from the difficulties the Scottish Highlands presented to geologists who were just learning to decipher the very complex processes of mountain building and metamorphism. David Oldroyd follows this controversy into the last years of the nineteenth century, as geology was transformed by increasing professionalization and by the development of new field and laboratory techniques. In telling this story, Oldroyd's aim is to analyze how scientific knowledge is constructed within a competitive scientific community—how theory, empirical findings, and social factors interact in the formation of knowledge. Oldroyd uses archival material and his own extensive reconstruction of the nineteenth-century fieldwork in a case study showing how detailed maps and sections made it possible to understand the exceptionally complex geological structure of the Highlands An invaluable addition to the history of geology, The Highlands Controversy also makes important contributions to our understanding of the social and conceptual processes of scientific work, especially in times of heated dispute.

First published in 1985, A History of the Highland Clearances: Volume 2 explores the various types of communal and intellectual responses, contemporary and retrospective, to the experience of the clearances. The first section considers the legacy of the two hundred years’ debate about the Highland problem and the place of the clearances therein. The second section assesses the scale, range and timing of the emigrations of the Highlanders, as well as some of the motivations. The third section contemplates the direct popular response to the clearances, the collective memory and the tradition of physical resistance. The fourth section is about the career, trial and reputation of Patrick Sellar, which together embodied much of the social history, ruling ideas, and the necessary mythology of the clearances. The final section considers the fundamental economic problem of the Highlands in the age of the clearances, and the moral and economic alternatives that faced the community, the landlords, and the nation.

Deforestation of Scotland began millennia ago and by the early 20th century woodland cover was down to about 6 per cent of the total land area. A century later woodland cover had tripled. Most of the newly established forestry plantations were created on elevated land with wet peaty soils and high wind exposure, not exactly the condition in which forests naturally thrive. Jan Oosthoek tells in this book the story of how 20th century foresters devised ways to successfully reforest the poor Scottish uplands, land that was regarded as unplantable, to fulfil the mandate they had received from the Government and wider society to create a timber reserve. He raises the question whether the adopted forestry practice was the only viable means to create forests in the Scottish Highlands by examining debates within the forestry community about the appearance of the forests and their longterm ecological prospects. Finally, the book argues that the long held ecological convictions among foresters and pressure from environmentalists came together in the late 20th century to create more environmentally sensitive forestry.

Collection of articles on foraminifera extracted from various publications originally published between 1847 and 1910

The Highlands of Ethiopia is a memoir of Sir William Cornwallis Harris. In this book, he describes his journey as the first British Ambassador to the Christian Court of the Kingdom of Shoa in the highlands of Aethiopia, ruled at the time by Sahela Selassie. That mission paved the way for trade with this part of Africa and ultimately for the British colonization of large territories of Africa, including Sudan.