APPENDIX: NOS. LVI.—LVII. 87 
the boxes that contained nothing but air, but nevertheless were not 
so tightly closed as to prevent the transmission of air containing 
water in solution, crystals attaching themselves to the sides and top, 
but never to the floor of the box, which crystals greatly resembled 
those in the snow; they were, however, often much longer, even to 
upwards of halfaninchin length. In the course of my observations, 
I found that this sand-snow formed principally in open places, on 
lakes, bare soils, &c., growing less on spongy grounds, scarcely at all 
upon logs of wood or outbuildings, 
LVII. 
Postscriet TO Herr Meves’s Parrer “On tue Snriper’s ‘ NEIGHING’ 
OR HUMMING NOISE, AND ON ITS TAIL-FEATHERS’ SYSTEMATIC 
VALUE.” 
[Translated and communicated by Mr. Woxury to the Zoological Society of 
London, 13 April, 1858. From the Society’s ‘ Proceedings’ for that year, 
pp- 201, 202.] 
Tue interesting discovery recorded in the above paper was first 
announced by M. Meves in an account of the birds observed by 
himself during a visit to the island of Gottland in the summer 
of the year 1856, which account appeared in a publication of the 
Vetenskaps Akademi! at Stockholm the following winter. 
In the succeeding summer M. Meves kindly showed me his 
experiments. The mysterious noise of the wilderness was repro- 
duced in a little room in the middle of Stockhoim. First the deep 
bleat now shown to proceed from the male Snipe, and then the 
fainter bleat of the female, both most strikingly true to nature, 
neither producible with any other feathers than the outer ones 
of the tail. 
I could not resist asking M. Meves the impertinent question, 
how, issuing forth from the town for a summer ramble, he came 
to discover what all the field-naturalists and sportsmen of England 
and other countries had, for the last century at least, been in vain 
trying to make out, straining their eyes, and puzzling their wits? 
He freely explained to me how, in a number of ‘ Naumannia,’ an 
accidental misprint of the word representing tail-feathers stead of 
wing-feathers ?—a mistake which another author took seriously, and 
ridiculed *—first led him to think on the subject. He subsequently 
examined in the Museum the tail-feathers of various species of 
Snipe, remarked their structure, and reasoned upon it. Then he 
H. Gadamer, Naumannia, 1853, pp. 411-413.—Ep, | 
(CHfvers. K, Vet.-Akad. Forhandl. 1856, pp. 275-277.—Ep. | 
f 
'J. Jackel, op. cit, 1855, pp. 112, 113.—Ep.] 
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