WILD LIFE IN SEVERN ESTUARY 25 



coloured blotches which almost run together on 

 the surface. Another bird rises from the marsh, 

 and the eye follows it upward in the air. It ascends 

 till it reaches a height of about a thousand feet, 

 when it begins a series of peculiar evolutions, the 

 bird descending rapidly in a curve and again mount- 

 ing to repeat the action. As the eye searches the 

 sky several birds, all snipe, are seen in other direc- 

 tions, each engaged in similar evolutions. Suddenly 

 the cause of the peculiar ghostly sound in the land- 

 scape is revealed. It comes from these birds high 

 in the air. It is the bleating or drumming note 

 of the snipe in the breeding season. The sound is 

 emitted by each bird at the moment of its downward 

 course through the air, and it ceases immediately 

 the lowest point of the curve is reached. It is 

 supposed as the result of experiments to be 

 produced by the vibration of the inner web of the 

 outermost tail feathers of the bird, as it makes 

 its descent. 



In these various ways among animals of express- 

 ing the intense emotions of the mating season we 

 catch a glimpse, almost as if we looked down the 

 corridors of time, of the infinite possibilities that 

 have always been latent in life. We imagine the 

 complexity of language and we think then of the 

 mechanism of voice among the higher animals, 

 and immediately we conceive it as if it were the 

 sole means for communicating by sound emotion 

 from one creature to another. Yet with what a 

 range of instruments have the sounds and emotions 

 of the love moods of life been in reality communi- 

 cated. From the shrillings of the cicadas, or the 

 scrapings of the crickets, or the lonely ecstatic love- 



