APPENDIX B. 



369 



M'Connochie. He writes under date of August 16, 1906: ''On 

 June 10, sitting by Lunan — the stream in front of my manse — I 

 saw a pair of Stock-Doves in lovely plumage. They were in the 

 willow-trees on the bank of the stream, but flew down to the field 

 near me. It was my first conscious sight of them : but another, who 

 seems very observant, says he has seen them with Ring-Doves in 

 beech-trees to the east of this a few miles.'*' This appears to bear 

 out my views of their dispersal taking place in Tay from the central 

 districts towards the coast-line (see text). And thus, even whilst these 

 pages are passing through the printers' hands, new developments in 

 dispersal are taking place, showing, in my humble opinion, the value 

 of chronological observation and record, as far as it is possible to 

 carry that out in practice. The absence to date further to the east 

 also, appears to me to be accentuated as regards the country belong- 

 ing to the Tay and Strathmore area, as already remarked upon in 

 the body of the text (pp. 262-3, etc.). 



Quails at Guthrie. 



Since the body of the text was printed the Quail has been heard calling 

 by the Rev. Mr. William M'Connochie, as reported to me in lit. 16th 

 August 1906 as follows: ''Last evening I went to the moor here 

 (i.e. August 11) through the fields. I am pretty sure I heard a j^air 

 of Quails calling to one another, one in a field of wheat, and the 

 other in a field of potatoes.'"' The Rev. Mr. M'Connochie, in the 

 same letter, informs me that " two Quails were shot near Montrose 

 (Dunninauld and Dysart) in 1879 and 1891,'" which are in the 

 Museum at Montrose, and which he saw there last April. In the 

 text it will be noticed (p. 276) that I give one as killed in August 

 1884; and also at p. 277 that I say I had no account of the bird — 

 at the time I wrote — from the parish of Guthrie ; so the above is 

 deserving of a place in our chronology. 



