Best Scoticus

1. CRASSIGYRINUS SCOTICUS: An eight-foot, sausage-bodied, giant-tadpole-like, long-skulled, huge-jawed, fearsome-toothed, bone-smashing, fish-guzzling, marine tetrapod. Could crawl inadequately on land. This carboniferous cutie is known from two skulls and a skeleton found at Gilmerton near Edinburgh, and a skull from Dora Bone Bed, Cowdenbeath. Sadly became extinct when the freshwater swamps dried.

2. HAGGIS SCOTICUS Rarely-encountered beast of the heathery hills, this is a black-snouted, varicoloured furball, closely related to the hedgehog which, somewhat spinelessly, it resembles. Doubts about the existence of such a creature can be dispelled by a visit to Kelvin-grove Museum – a preserved, stuffed specimen is on display, authoritatively labelled.

3. LEPUS TIMIDUS SCOTICUS: Nominally a tim'rous beastie, the Scottish Mountain Hare is smaller and shorter-eared than the brown hare, with a greyish summer coat that turns white in winter. Known as the blue hare because of the blue tint to its undercoat, it lopes along the slopes and swims across the lochs. The Hare Preservation Trust says there's around 350,000, so not a case of "hare today, gone tomorrow".

4. LAGOPUS LAGOPUS SCOTICUS: One of my grouses is that mouses are mice and grice are grouse. The red grouse is L L Scoticus. Reddish-brown plump-bodied game bird of heather moorland whose population is declining, partly due to its susceptibility to nematode parasites. It is the doomed bird of Burns's song The Bonie Moor-Hen. Grouse shooting and its associated social rituals form the background to novels including John Buchan's The Thirty-Nine Steps.

5. VITRUVIUS SCOTICUS Several treatises were inspired by Roman architect Vitruvius, author of De Architectura, c40 BC. One of those was the work of William Adam, father of Robert Adam. Vitruvius Scoticus – a collection of plans, elevations and sections of public buildings, noblemen's and gentlemen's houses in Scotland – was published posthumously in 1812.