In all, 72 birds were used for the present study.Quail chicks were selected randomly from a single hatch and reared from day-old to 60 days of age under intensive system of management. Material was collected at three days interval up to 15 days, five days interval up to 30 days and ten days interval up to 60 days of age. Tissue pieces from various segments of the oviduct were fixed in 10% neutral buffered formalin and processed conventionally and 5mthick sections were made. The sections were stained using Haematoxylin and Eosin (H&E), van-Gieson's, Gomori's rapid one step trichrome and Gomori'sreticulin methods(Drury and Wallington, 1967).

Lymphocytes first appeared in the quail oviduct at 15 days of age in the subepithelial connective tissue layer of the vagina. At this age, the oviductal wall was made up of primary mucosal folds lined by simple columnar epithelium and a subepithelial connective tissue layer beneath.Various segments of the oviduct were not differentiated at this age except the uterus and vagina.Lymphatic tissue appeared in a sequential pattern from caudal end to cranial regions indicating the pattern of exposure to antigens from cloacal end to more anterior regions as reported in Kuttanad ducks by Patki (2010).Distribution of lymphocytes in the various segments of the quail oviduct was maximum at 40days-old birds;thereafter it decreased. Biggs (1956)reported that in fowl, the number and size of lymphoid tissue in peripheral organs varied with the antigenic stimuli. Transport of lymphocytes from bursa to thymus and peripheral organs occurred in day-old, 9 days-old, two to three weeks old and six weeks old chicks, but not in 14 weeks old fowl (Woods and Linna, 1965). According to Khan et al.(1997), in Dekalb strain of White Leghorn chicken, Blymphocytes first appeared in the lamina propria of chicken oviduct at five weeks of age and their frequency of occurrence peaked at 15 weeks from infundibulum to the uterus, while in vagina, it did so at 21 weeks.
In the infundibulum, distribution of the lymphocytes was more in the neck region when compared to the fimbriated end. They were located mainly in the lamina propria, the connective tissue surrounding the blood vessels and among the bundles of smooth muscle in the tunica muscularis. Lucas(1951) reported that the presence of free lymphocyte population in the binding loose connective tissue of the pancreas of duck were those that have migrated from the blood vessels to the parenchyma.

Lymphoid aggregates could be noticed in the connective tissue among bundles of smooth muscle in the neck region of the infundibulum at 60days of age (Fig. 1). Bradley (1960) and Kimijima(1989) mentioned occasional presence of islands of lymphoid tissue near the middle of infundibulum in fowl.Mohammadapour and Keshtmandi (2008)identified lymphocytes in the infundibulum of the turkey and pigeon oviduct either in diffused form or in aggregates along with many plasma cells.