224 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



found the distance to fall very short of Dr. Plot's rule for distinct 

 articulation j for the Doctor, in his history of Oxfordshire, allows 

 a hundred and twenty feet for the return of each syllable dis- 

 tinctly ; hence this echo, wh/ch gives ten distinct syllables, ought 

 to measure four hundred yards, or one hundred and twenty feet 

 to each syllable ; whereas our distance is only two hundred and 

 fifty-eight yards, or near seventy-five feet, to each syllable. Thus 

 our measure falls short of the Doctor's, as five to eight ; but then 

 it must be acknowledged that this candid philosopher was con- 

 vinced afterwards, that some latitude must be admitted of in the 

 distance of echoes according to time and place. 



When experiments of this sort are making, it should always be 

 remembered that weather and the time of day have a vast influence 

 on an echo ; for a dull, heavy, moist air deadens and clogs the 

 sound ; and hot sunshine renders the air thin and weak, and 

 deprives it of all its springiness, and a ruffling wind quite defeats 

 the whole. In a still, clear, dewy evening the air is most elastic ; 

 and perhaps the later the hour the more so. 



Echo has always been so amusing to the imagination, that the 

 poets have personified her j and in their hands she has been the 

 occasion of many a beautiful fiction. Nor need the gravest man 

 be ashamed to appear taken with such a phenomenon, since it may 

 become the subject of philosophical or mathematical inquiries. 



One should have imagined that echoes, if not entertaining, 

 must at least have been harmless and inoffensive ; yet, Virgil 

 advances a strange notion, that they are injurious to bees. After 

 enumerating some probable and reasonable annoyances, such as 

 prudent owners would .wish far removed from their bee-gardens, 

 he adds 



"aut ubi concava pulsu 



Saxa sonant, vocisque offensa resultat imago." 



This wild and fanciful assertion will hardly be admitted by the 

 philosophers of these days, especially as they all now seem agreed 

 that insects are not furnished with any organs of hearing at all. 

 But if it should be urged, that though they cannot hear yet perhaps 

 they may feel the repercussions of sounds, I grant it is possible 

 they may. Yet that these impressions are distasteful or hurtful, I 



