Vill PREFACE. 
entered the Society on the 27th of June previous. He was sub- 
sequently ‘entrusted with some message or advertisement to 
the Queen; which having performed with great approbation, 
he returned back into France again, with intention to continue 
for some years there.’ (Rawley.) Here we find him still keen 
in his observation of natural phenomena, sounds as before 
occupying a great share of his attention. Let him describe 
what he heard in his own words written nearly fifty years 
later. ‘ For echoes upon echoes, there is a rare instance thereof 
in a place which I will now exactly describe. It is some three 
or four miles from Paris, near a town called Pont-Charenton ; 
and some bird-bolt shot or more from the river of Seine. 
The room is a chapel or small church. The walls all stand- 
ing, both at the sides and at the ends. Two rows of pillars, 
after the manner of aisles of churches, also standing; the roof 
all open, not so much as any embowment near any of the walls 
left. There was against every pillar a stack of billets above a 
man’s height; which the watermen that bring wood down the 
Seine in stacks, and not in boats, laid there (as it seemeth) for 
their ease. Speaking at the one end, I did hear it return the 
voice thirteen several times: and I have heard of others, that 
it would return sixteen times: for I was there about three of 
the clock in the afternoon; and it is best (as all other echoes 
are) in the evening. .... I remember well, that when I went to 
the echo at Pont-Charenton, there was an old Parisian, who 
took it to be the work of spirits, and of good spirits. For 
(said he) call Satan, and the echo will not deliver back the 
devil’s name; but will say, va #’en ; which is as much in French 
as apage or avoid. And thereby I did hap to find that an 
echo would not return S, being but a hissing and an interior 
sound.’ (Sylva Sylvarum, cent. iii. 249, 251.) Another story 
which he tells of himself belongs to this period of his life. ‘TI 
had, from my childhood, a wart upon one of my fingers: after- 
wards, when I was about sixteen years old, being then at Paris, 
there grew upon both my hands a number of warts (at the 
least an hundred) in a month’s space. The English ambassador’s 
lady, who was a woman far from superstition, told me one day, 
ae ee 
