SNIPE 305 



reference has just been made, the tail is widely spread, and that the 

 outermost pair stand distinctly apart from their fellows. Further, he 

 showed that this pair of feathers is peculiar in that their shafts are 

 unusually thick, and strangely bowed, while the vanes of the inner 

 web are thicker and more powerfully held together than in the case 

 of those of the other feathers. Mr. Bahr's experiments are carefully 

 described, and at great length, in the essay just referred to, so that 

 space can only be found here for a summary thereof. Briefly, those 

 who will may readily test for themselves the truth of his contention 

 that these tail feathers alone are concerned in the production of the 

 " bleating," and this by inserting the feathers into a cork attached 

 to a stick of some six inches long, to the other end of which is affixed 

 a long string. The apparatus is then whirled round, when, after a 

 few turns, the characteristic sounds are produced. Care should be 

 taken, in reproducing this experiment, to see that the outer web is so 

 placed as to encounter the resistance to the air, and that the feather 

 is affixed to the cork by a pin, so as to prevent any displacement of 

 the requisite angle in regard to the wind. Mr. Bahr satisfied himself 

 that both sexes " drum," when one day he came across a patch of 

 ground tenanted only by a pair of snipe, which had newly hatched 

 young, in hiding. He then observed both parents repeatedly drum- 

 ming above him. 



Having satisfied himself as to the sound-producing apparatus in 

 the common-snipe, Mr. Bahr proceeded to examine and experiment 

 \vith the tails of a number of other species of Snipe a dozen species in 

 all, of which the tails of nine produced bleating sounds, in varying 

 degrees of intensity, when treated after his method. Some of these 

 were known to "bleat" during life, while of other species no observa- 

 tions seem to have been made. But it is a curious thing that in 

 a considerable number of species, more or fewer from three to nine 

 pairs of the outer tail feathers are more or less conspicuously 

 attenuated, and this attenuation reaches its maximum in Gallinago 

 stenwa, wherein these feathers are little more than "pin-feathers." 



