lyy 



April 13, 1858. 

 Dr. Gray, F.R.S.,V.P., in the Chair. 



The following papers were read : — 



I. On thk Snipes' "neighing" or humming noise, and on 

 its Tail-feathers' systematic value. By W. Mini-. 

 Conservator at the Zoological Riks-Museum in Stock- 

 holm. Translated and communicated by John Wol- 

 ley, Jun., Esa., F.Z.S. 



On the origin of the neighing sound which accompanies the single 

 Snipe's (Scotopa.c gallinago, L.) play — flight during pairing time — 

 opinions are various. Bechstein thought that it was produced hy 

 means of the heak ; Naumann and others, again, that it originated 

 in powerful strokes of the wing : hut since Pralle * in Hanover ob- 

 served that the bird makes heard its well-known song or cry, which 

 he expresses with the words " gick jack, gick jack! " at the same 

 time with the neighing sound, it seemed to be settled that the latter is 

 not produced through the throat. In the mean time I have remarked 

 with surprise, that the humming sound could never he observed 

 whilst the bird was flying upwards, at which time the tail is closed ; 

 but only when it was casting itself downwards in a slanting direction, 

 with the tail strongly spread out. 



The peculiar form of the tail-feathers in some foreign species 

 Dearly allied to our Snipe (for example, S. javensis) encouraged the 

 notion, that the tail, if not alone, at all events in a considerable de- 

 cree, conduced to the production of the sound. On a closer exa- 

 mination of the tail-feathers of our common species, I found the 

 first (outer) feather, especially, very peculiarly constructed; the shaft, 

 uncommonly stiff, Babre-shaped ; the rays 01 the web strongly bound 

 together and very long, the longest reaching nearly three-fourths of 

 the whole length of the web, these rays lying along (or spanning from 

 end to end of the curve of) the shaft, like the strings of a musical 

 instrument (Fig. 1). If one blows from the outer side upon the 

 broad web it comes into vibration, and a sound is heard, which, though 

 fainter, resembles very closely the well-known neighing. 



But to convince one's self fully that it is the first feather which pro- 

 duces the peculiar sound, it is only necessary carefully to pluck out 

 such a one, to fasten its shaft with flue thread to a piece of si eel 

 wire a tenth of an inch in diameter and a foot long, and then to Hx 

 this at the end of a 1-foot stick. If now one draws the feather, with 

 its outer side forward, sharply through the air, at the same time 

 making some short movements or shakings of the arm bo as to re- 

 present the shivering motion of the wings during flight, one produces 

 the neighing sound with the most astonishing exactness 



' Viutnannin. 



