94 THE ECHOES OF SELBORNE 



down brought his three swivel guns to try them in 

 my outlet, with their muzzles towards the Hanger, 

 supposing that the report would have had a great 

 effect ; but the experiment did not answer his expecta- 100 

 tion. He then removed them to the alcove on the 

 Hanger, when the sound, rushing along the Lythe 

 and Combwood, was very grand : but it was at the 

 Hermitage that the echoes and repercussions delighted 

 the hearers, not only filling the Lythe with the roar, 

 as if all the beeches were tearing up by the roots ; 

 but, turning to the left, they pervaded the vale above 

 Combwood-ponds, and, after a pause, seemed to take 

 up the crash again, and to extend around Harteley- 

 hangers, and to die away among the coppices and no 

 coverts of Ward-le-ham. It has been remarked before 

 that this district is an Anathoth, a place of responses 

 and echoes, and therefore proper for such experiments ; 

 we may further add that the pauses in echoes, when 

 they cease and yet are taken up again, like the pauses 

 in music, surprise the hearers, and have a fine effect 

 on the imagination. 



GILBERT WHITE. 



NOTES 



LINE 1. In a district so diversified. For a description of the 

 parish of Selborne, see ante, p. 16. 



15. adroit polyglot. Clever linguist. 



19. Tityre, tu patulae recubans (sub tegmine fagi) = ' You, 

 Tityrus, reclining in the shadow of a spreading beech ' : the 

 first line of Virgil's first Eclogue. 



65. insects not furnished with any organs of hearing at all. It 

 is now believed that the ear is not the only organ of hearing ; 

 but that probably some insects hear with their antennae, and 

 that the serpent hears with its ' double tongue '. 



72. Anathoth. The word, as stated in the text, means the 



