Trans. X. V. Ac. Set. 76 March 17, 



Mr. Chamberlin suggested that such sand might emit louder 

 sounds by its fall from a height. 



A Visitor stated that he had lived eleven months on the shore of 

 Costa Rica, on the Caribbean Sea, about seventeen miles south of 

 Greytown, in longitude 86°, while engaged in laying out a railroad, 

 in the year 1864. He was the only European at that locality. While 

 lying in bed at about eleven o'clock, one evening in February of that 

 year, he was very much surprised by a peculiar sound from the soli- 

 tary sea-beach outside of the house, which resembled the footsteps of 

 a person approaching. Wondering whether it was caused by some 

 native, or by an animal, such as an alligator, he rose, took his ma- 

 chete, and went out. The sound had ceased, the full moon was shin- 

 ing upon the beach, but no person or cause of the sound could be ob- 

 served. The follo%\-ing night, at about the same hour, curious sounds 

 again arose outside, sometimes like a low roar or like the barking of a 

 dog, and which seemed to come from the distance of about fifteen 

 yards, near the water-line. He went out and shouted, searching in 

 vain for the workmen who had broken the rules by leaving their huts. 

 On his return to the house, the barking sound was repeated, some- 

 times resembling the voices of two men conversing, and he thought 

 himself possibly under the influence of some auditory delusion. The 

 following night, a sound broke forth like that of hundreds of loud 

 voices in the air, sometimes like that of singing, sometimes like the 

 stringing of chords. Looking afterward for an explanation of these 

 sounds, he found that the sand of the beach overlaid a stratum of 

 massive coral reefs. At this point a tongue of land jutted far out from 

 the coast-line, and, when the water retired at low tide, he could walk 

 out a considerable distance upon these reefs. He found the whole 

 beach and this coral stratum to be fissured all around the promon- 

 tory by very deep clefts, and then concluded that the slapping of the 

 water against the rocks, in the hollows beneath the beach, had proba- 

 bly caused these sounds of rushing, barking of a dog, the stringing of 

 instruments, and the sounds of voices in the air. At present, he ques- 

 tioned whether a sonorous variety of sand might not also^have been 

 involved in this curious phenomenon. 



March 17 1884. 



Section' of Geology. 



The President, Dr. J. S. Newberry, in the Chair. 

 Thirty-four persons present. 



