28 TRANSACTIONS OF THE [ocr. 27, 
October 27th, 1890. 
STATED MEETING. 
The President, Dr. NEWBERRY, in the chair. 
About seventy-five persons present. 
Minutes of October 20th were read and approved. 
Dr. NEWBERRY exhibited a fine specimen of turquoise from 
Mineral Park, Arizona. 
The following paper was read : 
RESEARCHES ON MUSICAL SAND IN THE HAWAIIAN ISLANDS 
AND IN CALIFORNIA. 
BY DR. H. CARRINGTON BOLTON. 
(Abstract. ) 
I. Kauai and Nithau. 
About a year ago I presented to the Academy some account 
of my study of sonorous sand in the Peninsula of Sinai. That 
communication was in continuation of researches begun jointly 
with Dr. Alexis A. Julien in 1882, the results of which have 
been laid before you on several occasions (May 14th, 1883; 
March 10th, 1884; April 28th, 1884; October 15th, 1888; May 
13th, 1889; October 21st, 1889). We have shown that the phe- 
nomenon of musical sand has been generally neglected by scien- 
tists, although it is of a marked character, and that the sand is 
widely distributed in nature, occurring on fresh-water lakes, 
on sea-beaches, and in arid regions. 
In the spring of this year I visited the so-called ‘‘ Barking 
Sands” of the Hawaiian Islands, already mentioned in the 
works of several travellers (Bates, Frink, Bird, Nordhoff, and 
others). As a natural curiosity the place has a world-wide 
fame, but the printed accounts are rather meagre in detail, and 
show their authors to have been unacquainted with similar phe- 
nomena elsewhere. 
On the southwest coast of Kauai, in the district of Mana, 
sand-dunes attaining a height of over 100 feet extend for a mile 
or more nearly parallel to the sea, and covering hundreds of 
acres with the water-worn and wind-blown fragments of shells 
and coral. The dunes are terminated on the west by bold cliffs 
(Pali) whose base is washed by the sea; at the east end the 
range terminates in a dune more symmetrical in shape than the 
