194 THE NATURAL HISTORY 



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 

 repercussion of sounds, I grant it is possible they may. 

 Yet that these impressions are distasteful or hurtful, I 

 deny, because bees, in good summers, thrive well in my 

 outlet, where the echoes are very strong : for this village 

 is another Anathoth, a place of responses or echoes. 

 Besides, it does not appear from experiment that bees are 

 in any way capable of being affected by sounds : for I have 

 often tried my own with a large speaking-trumpet held 

 close to their hives, and with such an exertion of voice as 

 would have hailed a ship at the distance of a mile, and 

 still these insects pursued their various employments un- 

 disturbed, and without showing the least sensibility or 

 resentment. 



Some time since its discovery this echo is become totally 

 silent, though the object, or hop-kiln, remains : nor is 

 there any mystery in this defect ; for the field between is 

 planted as an hop-garden, and the voice of the speaker is 

 totally absorbed and lost among the poles and entangled 

 foliage of the hops. And when the poles are removed 

 in autumn the disappointment is the same ; because 

 a tall quick-set hedge, nurtured up for the purpose of 

 shelter to the hop ground, entirely interrupts the impulse 

 and repercussion of the voice : so that till those 

 obstructions are removed no more of its garrulity can be 

 expected. 



Should any gentleman of fortune think an echo in his 

 park or outlet a pleasing incident, he might build one at 

 little or no expense. For whenever he had occasion for a 

 new barn, stable, dog-kennel, or the like structure, it would 

 be only needful to erect this building on the gentle declivity 

 of an hill, with a like rising opposite to it, at a few hun- 

 dred yards distance ; and perhaps success might be the easier 

 ensured could some canal, lake, or stream, intervene. From 

 a seat at the centrum phonicum he and his friends might 

 amuse themselves sometimes of an evening with the prattle 

 of this loquacious nymph ; of whose complacency and 



