ECHOES. 235 



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 undisturbed, and without showing the least 

 sensibility or resentment. 



Some time since its discovery, this echo is become totally 

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

 mystery in this defect, for the field between is planted as a 

 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 disappoint- 

 ment 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 pleasant 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 a 

 hill, with a like rising opposite to it, at a few hundred yards 

 distance ; and perhaps success might be the easier insured 

 could some canal, lake or stream, intervene. From a seat at 

 the phonic centre, he and his friends might amuse themselves 

 sometimes of an evening with the prattle of this loquacious 

 nymph ; of whose complacency and decent reserve, more 

 may be said than can with truth of every individual of her 

 sex ; since she is 



" Quse nee reticere loquenti. 

 Nee prior ipsa loqui, didicit resonabilis echo." 



The vocal echo ne'er withholds reply, 

 But ne'er intrudes. 



P.S. The classic reader will, I trust, pardon the following 

 lovely quotation, so finely describing echoes, and so poetically 

 accounting for their causes from popular superstition. 



