Waterbury Democrat., 1901-05-22
NATURES PRACTICAL JOKES.

Nature sometimes indulges in prac- tical jokes and terrifies people with weird music and other mysterious sounds, which put the Knowing ones" at their wits end for plausible, sclen- tific explanation, says the New York Press. Tn Connecticut there are the celebrated .'Moodus noises" FTom the bowels of Moodus hill there issues at times horrible sounds of groaning and grinding, as if within the depths of the hill there were imprisoned great gi- ant, struggling to hberate himself. These noises can be explained, of course, on the theory of rocks settling in the interior of the hill and grind ing against each other, etc. But the one thing sure is that something is talk ing place in the interior of the hill, and making an awful row about 1t.
 In Connecticut, also, is 9 wood, which, when the wind is from a cer- tain direction, becomes vocal with long-draWn musical notes. On such occasions these woods become like g great organ, and diapason swells out from beneath their waving branches over the country. The expla- nation is easy. The trees inithe wood are full of holes, where squirrels have made their homes, and when the wind is from the right quarter 1t draws through these arboreal organ pipes, and they give out the weird and mys- terious music.
 During the war with Spain nature played one of her jokes on the people along the Maine coast. The Spanish fleet was at sea, it was known, but 7fc, of m and while our ships were searching for it all over the Caribbean sea and the Gulf of Mexico, people at home were anxious lest the enemy should make descent upon the coast. One still afternoon when haze hid the hori- zon, fifty miles of Maine coast was thrown into alarm by the sound of gun booming out at sea. Half an hour elapsed in silence and then came another boom, and so on all the after noon until o'clock. The next day at about the same hour, the weather being still warm and thick, the noises began again. Boats went out but could see no Spanish fleet. It was not until definite news came that the Spanish fleet was bottled up safely in Santiago harbor that the people on the Maine coast could be convinced that 8 naval battle had not taken place off their shores. pr. Hay, the scientist, gave, the only possible explanation of the mysterious sounds. He noticed that they were heard only on warm, moist days-conditions similar to those prevailing when like sounds are heard off Ostend in Belgium. There they are called "mist-poeffers,'' or fog hic- coughs" They are either electric in their origin or else caused by beds of olyfr 1lf,1x% 1>1 the sea-
 The wornout officers and men at Bhagulphore, in the Indian mutiny, were turned out of their beds one sul- Stry night in summer by the crash of q single gun booming up the river. It was the appointed signal that the reb- els were advancing again, and the garrison was kept under arms until morning, but no sign of the Sepoy mu- tineers was seen. Men who knew the country afterward declared that the sound was merely an extra loud mani festation of nature known, as the "Brisal guns" They are heard over a wide district along the lower Ganges and in some other parts of India. In the siege of Mafeking a dispatch rider got into the city and reported that the Boers were moving up some new and awful instrument of war. As he had ridden through the sandhiIls south west of the town the air had been filled with a low, deep hum rising to sound like the full chord of an organ. Much speculation and some alarm was caused by his story, until native ex- plained that such sounds were com mon among those sandhills and were made by the spirits of the dead Kaffir kings who haunt the place. Later in- yestigation showed that the material of which these sandhills is composed consists of minute particles so in- tensely hard and dry that as they fall in constant little avalanches down the steep sides of the slopes they cause musical vibration.
 On the shores of the Red sea and at one place on the shore of the gulf of Mexico are beaches of singing sands" which at times give out mu- sical notes. Various reasons for the cratic behavor of these beaches have been given, but none is quite satisfac tory.