Tue WoopDcock. 49 
white feathers in each wing, shot by the gamekeeper to C. G. S. 
Menteath of Closeburn in 1824. 
The ornithologists of our Society have been so good in 
giving me all the assistance in their power as regards my forth- 
coming Book on the “ Birds of Dumfriesshire,’ that I should 
like to take this opportunity of thanking them collectively, and 
at the same time add how gladly I shall acknowledge any further 
communications they may be able to favour me with on the 
subject. The Book, it is hoped, will be published in October, 
1909. 
Some ANCIENT CHAPELS OF KNAPDALE. By Mr W. A. 
MACKINNEL. 
The fervent missionary enterprise of the early Keltic Church 
is still borne witness to by the large number of ancient ecclesiasti- 
cal ruins scattered all over the West Highlands and Islands. 
Hardly an island, even the smallest and most remote, many 
of which are now tenantless, save for the sea-birds, but has its. 
ruined chapel, and probably half obliterated burial ground. St. 
Kilda, far out on the western sea, the solitary and now deserted 
North Rona in the far north, the desolate Sula Sgeir, the lonely 
Shiants, and the Flannens—blessed islands of old Gaelic legend 
—not to mention the more important and less remote islands, all 
have their chapel ruins, more or less rude certainly, but not the 
less interesting. 
The absence of “modern improvements,’’ and, what is less: 
satisfactory, the gradual depopulation of the Highlands, have 
combined to preserve to us many of these memorials of the past 
intact, save for the ravages of time and weather, and this to a 
greater degree in the islands than on the mainland. 
Argyllshire is naturally the western county richest in ancient 
eccleciastical remains, and of its districts Knapdale contains at 
least four, the chapels at Cove on Loch Caolisport, Kilmory on 
the Sound of Jura, Keills at the end of the long peninsula which 
separates Loch Sween from the Sound; and the most interesting 
one of all, the tiny chapel of St. Carmaig on Eilean Mor, lying 
a few miles S.S.W. of the mouth of Loch Sween. 
In the Statistical Account of the Parish of South Knapdale, 
1797, it is stated:—“ Monuments of primitive Christianity are 
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