Anniversary Address. 203 



Quails were heard at Branton, Northumberland. Mr 

 Pringle, the farmer there, heard a piping noise, which 

 he did not know, in a field in front of his house, and 

 asked my gamekeeper, Mullin, an Irishman, who was 

 passing, what it was ; Mullin, who has seen and heard 

 them often in Ireland, at once said they were Quails. 

 They were never seen, however. 



Stock Doves seem to be increasing in Northunibei-land. 

 I found two nests this year at Hedgeley ; one in a 

 hollow Alder, unfortunately near a footpath, and so low 

 down in the tree that I could look into the nest. I 

 saw the old bird fly out of the hole, and saw the eggs, 

 rather smaller and rounder, I thought, than those of the 

 House Pigeon ; there was more dry grass in the nest 

 than in the nests of other Pigeons. The other nest was 

 in a rabbit hole. I also saw a Stock Dove that had 

 been shot by the gamekeeper at Lilburn Tower; it had 

 been in a flock of Wood Pigeons. Canon Tristram tells 

 me that the first instance that he knows of the Stock 

 Dove being seen in the county of Durham was in 1860, 

 at Castle Eden, and since then it has steadily pushed 

 north, all through the Scottish woodlands. I think the 

 Stock Dove owes its safety to its likeness to blue 

 House Pigeons, and its note being like one of the notes 

 of the House Pigeon, and to its extreme silence and 

 shyness. 



The long drought is being seriously felt in all districts 

 whose water supply is dependent on springs, and by 

 all Water Companies, many towns being put on a very 

 short allowance of water by day, and the supply being 

 entirely cut ofl" at night. 



I am asked to call your attention to the first Volume 

 of the new History of Northumberland, which has just 

 been published, and is now on the table. No Societies 

 have done more to promote it than the Newcastle Society 

 of Antiquaries and the Berwickshire Naturalists' Club ; 

 nearly all the best helpers were members of these. 



