NOTES AND QUERIES. 307 



Buittle), there is a statement that Quails were very abundant in Wigtown- 

 shire at that time (1795), and the writer (Rev. G. Maxwell, of Glenarm) adds, 

 in reference to Buittle parish, that Quails " were hardly known a few years 

 ago, although now abundant." The species is included amongst the birds 

 of Colvend by Mr. McDiarmid in his useful little history of that most 

 interesting parish. Mr. Peter Adair, in a recent number of the 'Annals 

 of Scottish Natural History,' published a good account of the former 

 abundance of Quails in Wigtownshire, and gave a long and most extremely 

 interesting series of details of their disappearance within the last quarter of 

 a century. In Dumfriesshire, as has been shown, their annual visits seem 

 to have ceased somewhat abruptly about the end of the fifties, and in the 

 Stewartry I have every reason to believe they came for a few years longer, 

 and (so far as I know) one shot on Barnhill of Terregles in September, 1874, 

 and another also in autumn within the last year or two, shot on Shambellie, 

 are the only occurrences since the middle of the sixties. The foregoing 

 notes will give those who are interested in such a subject a general idea of 

 the status of the species in south-west Scotland. In the course of a long 

 experience of birds and their ways throughout these southern counties, 

 I have never seen the Quail alive in a wild state, nor heard its call until 

 June of the present year, when Mr. Robert Armstrong, tenant of the farm 

 of Rotchell, sent me a message to the effect that in mowing hay his men 

 had come upon a couple of nests containing eggs, the like of which he had 

 never seen before, adding that he had an idea they might be those of Quails. 

 Of course I lost no time in getting to the spot, and a glance at the nests 

 and eggs was sufficient to assure me that Mr. Armstrong s surmise was 

 quite correct. The nests were discovered just as the hay was being 

 cut, and the motion of the scythes frightened the sitting birds. Neither 

 Mr. Armstrong nor I wished to take the eggs, or to disturb the birds more 

 than could be helped, and so the eggs were let alone after a brief examination 

 of the nests aud surroundings. One nest contained five eggs, and was a 

 mere hollow scraped in the soil with almost no lining at all ; the other one 

 contained nine eggs, and was tolerably well lined with pieces of moss aud 

 small grass fibres. — R. Service (Maxwelltown, Dumfries). 



Nesting of the Grey Wagtail and Dipper in Surrey.— On April 15th 

 of the pieseut year my friend Mr. Elliot and I discovered a nest of 

 the Grey Wagtail, Motacilla boarula, with four eggs, in the neighbourhood 

 of Wimbledon. Owing probably to some new work being commenced 

 within a few yards of the nest, the eggs were deserted and stale, two of 

 them adhering to the bottom of the nest, although on blowing them 

 I found that incubation was some five or six days advanced. I felt sure 

 from a previous similar experience that when these deserted eggs were 

 removed from the nest, the bird would return and lay afresh, and on 



