COMMON QUAIL. 125 



age and high cultivation had not yet broken up the coarse, 

 tussocky, unimproved land in which they delighted. In the 

 Holderness district of Eastern Yorkshire they breed annually 

 in small numbers, and, although local, their nests have 

 been found in Durham and Northumberland. Northwards, 

 the eastern coast of Scotland is less suitable to their re- 

 quirements; and except in the Lowlands, to the south of the 

 Friths of the Forth and the Clyde, Quails are rare, although 

 nests have been found in the east of Sutherland and in 

 Caithness. The milder west coast offers grep':9r attractions, 

 especially the counties of Kirkcudbright, Wigton, and Ayr; 

 and Quails have even bred so far west as the islands of 

 Lewis and North Uist in the Outer Hebrides. Mr. J. H. 

 Dunn obtained a nest containing eleven eggs on the 4th 

 October, 1851, near Stromness in the Orkneys ; and Dr. 

 Saxby records the finding of one with ten eggs on the 25th 

 September, 1868, at Burrafirth in Unst, the most northern 

 island of the Shetland group, — but the extension of range 

 in this north-eastern direction is not so remarkable, seeing 

 that the summer- visits of this species extend to the Faeroes. 

 In Ireland Quails are both more generally distributed than in 

 Great Britain, and a far larger number remain throughout 

 the winter, especially in the south and south-western districts, 

 where frost is seldom felt ; the north-eastern portion being, 

 apparently, preferred during the breeding-season. 



A summer-visitant in no great abundance to Scandinavia 

 and Northern Russia up to about G5° N. lat., this species 

 becomes more common in Denmark and Northern Germany ; 

 and from thence southwards Quails are numerous, especially 

 on migration, throughout the remainder of the Continent. 

 Their extreme western limit is at the Azores,* where, accord- 

 ing to Mr. Godman, they are resident and not migratory, 

 breeding twice and even three times in the year ; and Dr. Bolle 

 says substantially the same of those found in the Canaries. 

 These resident birds are small in size, and the males 



* Large numbers have been turned out in America, especially in the State of 

 Vermont, where, in 1877, a flourishing stock of 6,000 birds had been secured. 

 (J. E. Harting, ' Zool.,' 1878, p. ^90.) 



