DAVID Ross's Inside Track article ("Written word puts trust in Highlands and Islands heritage", The Herald, July 30) is especially note­worthy in that it highlights what is perhaps a great secret about Scotland.

Mr Ross draws attention to a book launched in a remote corner of the country, specifically at the Durness Highland Gathering, which registers a pulse of Scotland to which perhaps too little mainstream attention is paid. The mainstream stethoscope is likely too often to be probing undersea oil reserve levels and whether power to the country's outposts is sufficiently decentralised. There is perhaps too much attention paid to short-term issues, some politically-stirred.

This mainly unattended pulse that David Ross draws attention to is of a heartbeat that tells of falsified histories, distorted agronomics, and many myths. The book underpinning the article, Two Hundred Years of Farming in Sutherland: The Story of my Family, by Reay DG Clarke, tells of a great swathe of territory, commonly known as the Highlands - about half of the whole of Scotland - that is legendary in its lack of productivity and likewise in population, and informs us that a considerable cause of this is due to human predation and human politics. More thought-provoking articles like this, please.

Ian Johnstone,

84 Forman Drive, Peterhead.