260 On peculiar Noises occasionally heard 



years I hesitated not to attribute to insects, an opinion I felt 

 compelled, though reluctantly, to give up, since, after the most 

 dihgent search, I could never detect the presence of any col- 

 lected body sufficiently numerous to account for the effect. 

 Many of the properties of sound have hitherto eluded the powers 

 of science, and much that is mysterious still remains to be un- 

 ravelled. 



With respect to the celebrated statue of Memnon at Thebes, 

 we have some very obstinate authorities to contend with, be- 

 fore it can be given up as entirely and absolutely fictitious. 

 Strabo, for instance, positively affirms that he heard sounds 

 emitted ; and so far was he from being a credulous auditor, 

 that, without being able, as he says, to declare whether it 

 proceeded from the statue or the base, he adds, that, although 

 it did certainly appear to him to issue from the one or the other, 

 he would rather believe that it came from the bystanders, and 

 was altogether an imposture, than conclude, though supported 

 by the evidence of his own senses, that stones ranged in such 

 and such a manner were capable of yielding sound. Pausa- 

 nias, also, who saw the mutilated remnants of the statue when the 

 lower part alone remained on the pedestal, speaks of it as a fact 

 concerning which there could be no question. Pliny, in his 

 Natural History, book 36. ch. 7., in enumerating the various 

 Egyptian marbles, mentions this Memnonian block as possessing 

 the singular quality of cleaving or cracking under the influence 

 of the morning sun. Juvenal alludes to it in his 15th Sat. 

 1.5, 



" Dimidio magicae resonant ubi Memnone chordae." 



And Tacitus, finally, informs us. An. lib. 2. § 61., that Germa- 

 nicus, in his progress up the River Nile, actually saw this 

 " Memnonis saxea effigies, ubi radiis solis icta est, vocalem so- 

 num reddens." Notwithstanding this collected evidence, though 

 we may hesitate in admitting the fact to its full extent, I am in- 

 clined so far to give it weight, as to believe that, if there was 

 imposture, that imposture had still truth for its foundation, 

 namely, that some similar phenomenon had been detected in 

 masses of insulated stones, — a supposition strongly corroborated 

 by the unquestionable testimony of Humboldt, whose attention 

 was drawn to some remarkable granite rocks in South America, 



