950 The American Naturalist. [October, 
United States, one place in Mexico, one in South America, one in the 
Sandwich Islands, and one in Arabia.’’ 
In 1888, Dr. Bolton went to Arabia, where he had heard there was a 
beach of the remarkable sand. When he reached that country he 
found a journey of two weeks across a terrible desert would be necessary 
to reach the beach, which was on the Gulf of Suez. The Arabs had 
heard of the ‘‘singing ’’ sand, and had a superstitious fear of it. The 
sheik of the tribe where he was refused to send any of his men with 
the explorer. Finally, persuasion and gold won him, and a caravan 
of fourteen camels and as many men set out. There was not a drop 
of water, no vegetation, no food,—only glaring, drifting sand. All 
the water and all the food had to be carried with them. It was four 
weeks before the caravan returned from the desert. It came back 
worn, weary, and nearly famished, but triumphant, for Dr. Bolton had 
found the finest beach of musical sand he had ever seen. 
Last year he went to the Sandwich Islands, and found more of the 
sand, just as the little boy had said when he gave the doctor 
his first information about this curious natural formation. In Southern 
California is a huge sand-dune, on which are patches of the musical 
This dune is about seventy feet high ; shaped like the half of a 
lens. The following legend is connected with the spot : 
Many years ago there was a flourishing monastery at this place, but, 
owing to the wickedness of the monks, it was overwhelmed by drifting 
The monastery bells, however, were not involved in the fall of 
the monks, having been blessed with due ceremony by high ecclesiastics, 
hence the sound of these holy bells are still heard at matins and 
vespers. The only similar sonorous dunes known are Jebel Nagous, in 
Arabia, Rig-i-Rawan, in Afghanistan, and one of a similar name in 
Persia, Nohili, in Kauai, and possibly one in Churchill county, Nevada. 
On Two New Species of Mustelide from the Loup 
Fork Miocene of Nebraska.—Stenogale robusta sp. nov.— 
Established on a left mandibular ramus which lacks only the posterior 
border, and which contains in place the molars two to five inclusive, 
and the root of the canine. The technical characters are those of 
Stenogale Schlosser, differing only from Mustela in the cutting-blade 
of the heel of the inferior sectorial, ‘The species is much more robust 
than those referred to the genus by Dr. Schlosser. The inferior border 
of the ramus below the coronoid process, is obliquely flattened, and 
inflected in a way not seen in the Mustela pennantii, forming a strong 
inferior border to the masseteric fossa, ‘The dental foramen is a little 
