This interesting discovery was first announced by M. Meves in an account of the birds observed by himself during a visit to the Island of Gottland, in the summer of the year 1856, which narrative was published at Stockholm in the following winter. In the succeeding summer, M. Meves showed his experiments to Mr. Wolley, whose services to Ornithology we have already noticed. The mysterious noise of the wilderness was reproduced in a little room in the middle of Stockholm: first, the deep bleat, now shown to proceed from the male Snipe, and then the fainter bleat of the female, both most strikingly true to nature, neither producible with any other feathers than the outer ones of the tail. Mr. Wolley inquired of Mr. Meves how, issuing forth from the town on a summer ramble, he came to discover what had puzzled the wits and strained the eyes of so many observers. He freely explained how, in a number of "Naumannia," an accidental misprint of the word representing tail-feathers instead of wing-feathers,--a mistake which another author ridiculed--first led him to think on the subject. He subsequently examined in the Museum at Stockholm the tail-feathers of various species of Snipe, remarked their structure, and reasoned upon it. Then he blew upon them, and fixed them on levers that he might wave them with greater force through the air; and at the same time he made more careful observation than he had hitherto done in the living birds. In short, in him the obscure hint was thrown upon fruitful ground, whilst in a hundred other minds it had failed to come to light. Dr. Walsh saw at Constantinople a Woodpecker, about the size of a Thrush, which was very active in devouring flies, and tapped woodwork with his bill with a noise _as loud as that of a hammer_, to disturb the insects concealed therein, so as to seize upon them when they appeared. Among remarkable bird services should not be forgotten those of the Trochilos to the Crocodile. "When the Crocodile," says Herodotus, "feeds in the Nile, the inside of his mouth is always covered with _bdella_ (a term which the translators have rendered by that of _leech_). All birds, _except one_, fly from the Crocodile; but this one bird, the _Trochilos_, on the contrary, flies towards him with the greatest eagerness, and renders him a very great service; for every time that the Crocodile comes to the land to sleep, and when he lies stretched out with his jaws open, the Trochilos enters and establishes himself in his mouth, and frees him from the bdella which he finds there. The Crocodile is grateful, and never does any harm to the little bird who performs for him this office."