THE STOCK DOVE IN SCOTLAND^ 7 



May of that year ; and they had reached as far west as Glen 

 Cassley ("Ann. Scot. Nat. Hist," April 1892). And other 

 records here and there have reached us from Sutherland 

 and Caithness. 



Last of all, and singularly interesting, is the record of a 

 Stock Dove shot near Spiggie in Shetland by the Brothers 

 Henderson, as recorded in the present number of the "Annals." 



Shortly reviewing these known records, there is some 

 study required to trace the lines of advance to the north. 

 It would appear that both east and west coasts south of 

 Forth and Clyde almost equally participated in the earlier 

 invasions, and probably from pressure at a centre which 

 appears to have been in existence for many years in York- 

 shire, where Mr. Boyes informed Mr. Eagle Clarke that the 

 old warreners on the wolds remembered them as abundant 

 sixty years ago. Thence they seem to have overflowed to 

 the north and west, followed both coasts as far as Forth 

 and Clyde, and then trended north-westward, up the Forth 

 valley. Somehow, Fife, Forfar, and Kincardine do not appear 

 to have received any great quota of their numbers ; but the 

 River Tay above Perth seems to have received them with 

 open arms ; and on the Forth and Tay upper valleys they are 

 now fairly abundant. Did they thereafter pass down over 

 the watershed at, say, Dalwhinnie into Spey, and pass on 

 down to the lower reaches of Spey, and the great sands of 

 the south coast of the Moray Firth, and bend back down to 

 the north-west coast of Aberdeenshire, populating or return- 

 ing from the coast lines to the higher valleys later on ? 

 Or, How did they first reach into Moray by 1883 ? Why 

 are the coast lines east of Speymouth still bare of birds, but 

 a patch or two populated on the east coast of Aberdeen ? 

 Why were Fife, Forfar, and Kincardine passed by, if they 

 came from south to north, and north-west Aberdeen and 

 Moray densely populated ? Has the invasion really come 

 to these northern counties direct from the south, or from 

 other natural increase at other centres of Continental origin ? 

 I ask the questions without at present attempting to give a 

 satisfactory reply to any one of them. I think, however, the 

 subject is one of great interest and of considerable import- 

 ance to any careful student of distribution and migration, 



