124 BIRDS OF THE WEST OF SCOTLAND. 



lists given by some observers who are known to have had an 

 accurate knowledge of birds. Thus, it is included in Don's Fauna 

 of Forfarshire, and also in Mr Kinloch's statistical account of the 

 parish of Kirriemuir in the same county, the compilers of both 

 being men of more than ordinary shrewdness and discrimination 

 in matters relating to natural history. The species was likewise 

 observed by the late Dr Landsborough at Stevenston in Ayrshire, 

 and by the minister of Luss in Dumbartonshire, from whose ex- 

 cellent list, published upwards of seventy years ago, I have taken 

 the Gaelic name originally applied to the Wood Lark. Pennant 

 includes it in his ' Caledonian Zoology,' which was prefixed to 

 Lightfoot's 'Flora Scotica,' published in 1777-, and the late Dr 

 Fleming, in the short remarks given in his work on British animals, 

 does not speak of it as a bird of restricted distribution. In the 

 county of Caithness it had been found by the late Mr Sinclair, 

 surgeon, Wick, in whose collection a specimen was seen by Mr 

 James Wilson, who refers to the species in his Voyage Round 

 Scotland, vol. ii., p. 179. Mr Edward informs me that he has 

 procured the species in Banffshire, and it appears to have been 

 oftener than once observed in Aberdeenshire by Mr Angus, who 

 has sent me the following notes on its occurrence there: 



" In the last week of March, 1863, I shot a male Wood Lark in 

 the enclosure at Scotston House.* Being the first time I had 

 heard this pleasing songster, I was particularly struck by its mode 

 of singing. It continued flying in circles, trilling its sweet music 

 without intermission for half aii-hour or longer, except once or 

 twice when it alighted for a moment on the top bar of a wooden 

 fence. I again observed the species one frosty morning in March, 

 1865, at the rifle range near the powder magazine. The sun was 

 strong and clear, and the song of the bird was as jubilant as if it 

 had been uttered in the middle of summer." Mr Brown informs 

 me that this bird breeds on the confines of Torwood in Stirling- 

 shire. I have myself seen it on one or two occasions near the 

 Bridge of Allan in the same county, and also in the vicinity of 

 Forres in Morayshire the only two localities in which I have met 

 with it in Scotland. Mr Thomas M'llwraith, now resident in 

 Hamilton, Ontario, C. W., writes to me that he watched a pair of 

 Wood Larks near Ayr in 1853. "The male," says Mr M'llwraith, 



* Mr Augus has since shown me the specimen. 



