MK. H. STEVENSON’ ON THE COMMON SNIPE. 
493 
might naturally have taken it for the ‘ play ’ of the cock bird at 
pairing time, ami something analogous, though in the air, to the 
wing trailing of the Capercailie and the Turkey Cock at the same 
season, or even to that of the more diminutive Skylark, who 
trapes one wing and then the other, with crest erect, as he 
2 iironeftes round the exceedingly impassive object of his affections. 
Such notions, however, have been dispelled by the close observation 
of several who have discovered that hath sexes emit the drumming 
sound, and hence may be the accumulated sound over the 
marshes on bright starlight nights, when the hen birds have joined 
their mates for a last aerial flight before roosting. Mr. Harting 
has (piitu satilied himself on this point, and indeed, if my memory 
serves me, he once shot two Snipes which he had watched 
individually drumming, and ascertained they were male and female. 
As to the origin of the sound, other 1 British ornithologists, such 
as Jardine, Macgillivray, Hancock, Saxby, and others have 
attributed it to the wings. Amongst continental authors, Hechstein 
supposed it vocal, and Naumann, Altum, and Meves duo oidy to the 
tail feathers. The latter impression seems to have originated with 
Herr Meves, of Stockholm, whose experiments with the stiff outer 
tail-feathers of different species fixed on wires, and drawn rapidly 
through the air, producing a similar though modified sound to the 
drumming of the bird in flight, attracted the attention of 
the late John Wolley, and by him a translation of an article on 
the subject by Moves* was published in the Proceedings of the 
Zoological Society for 1858. I can but thus briefly refer to this 
interesting paper, but may refer my readers to an admirable article 
on the “Humming of the Snipe” by Mr. Harting in the 
‘Zoologist’ for 1881, and a subse(iuent chapter in his essays on 
‘ Sport and Xatural History,’ in which he treats, in extenso, 
the views of Herr Meves and of other continental authorities, 
inclining himself, however, to the belief that the vibratory wings 
are the true cause of the drumming, but Dresser in his ‘ Birds 
* Moves states he had convinced himself that the drumming was common 
to Iwth male and female, and the sound rather deeper in the former than 
the latter. This is also the opinion of Profe.ssor Neilsson. 
Pnille, in Hanover, observed that the bird makes its song or cry at 
the same time with the drumming sound, which he makes gick, jack; 
gick, jack. 
