ON THE “HUMMING” OF THE SNIPE. 123 
England, who are the more inclined to adopt this view from 
having observed that Peewits, Rooks, Gulls, and other birds, 
with tails very different from that of a Snipe, make an analogous 
sound when falling through the air. In the Peewit especially 
this sound is remarkably loud, and can be heard at a considerable 
distance by anyone who approaches in the nesting time the vicinity 
of its eggs or young. In the case of this bird, however, the sound 
' seems to be produced more for the purpose of attracting the 
attention of the intruder and leading him from the nest. 
The “theory of the wings,” then, might possibly have met 
with general approval, had it not been for the ingenious discovery 
of the Swedish naturalist Meves, whose original observations 
were first made known to English readers through the instru- 
mentality of a well-known English ornithologist, the late John 
Wolley. While on a visit to Herr Meves at Stockholm, Wolley 
learnt from him that an accidental misprint of the word repre- 
senting ‘‘tail-feathers” instead of “ wing-feathers” first led him 
to think on the subject. He subsequently examined the tail- 
feathers of different species of Snipe, blew upon them, and fixed 
them on levers that he might wave them with greater force 
through the air; and finally hit upon an ingenious contrivance 
which to his mind, and subsequently to the minds of many 
others, demonstrated that the “humming” is produced by the 
outer feathers of the tail. 
This discovery was announced to English readers in an article 
which Wolley translated and communicated to the Zoological 
Society in April, 1858, and which was published in the Society’s 
‘Proceedings’ for that year. As this article, however, appears 
to have received comparatively little notice in this country, and 
certainly not that attention which it deserves from naturalists 
who, residing near the summer haunts of the Snipe, are best 
qualified to decide the question, I have thought it desirable, by a 
repetition of Herr Meves’s theory, to give English observers an 
opportunity of testing its value at a time of year when the hum- 
ming sound may be heard by anyone who will take the trouble to 
visit the nearest Snipe-ground. Herr Meves says :— 
“The peculiar form of the tail-feathers in some foreign species nearly 
allied to our Snipe encouraged the notion that the tail, if not alone, at all 
events in a considerable degree, conduced to the production of the sound. 
On a closer examination of the tail-feathers of our common species, I found 
