128 NATURAL HISTORY. 



echo, it choppeth with you upon the sudden. It is 

 requisite likewise that the air be not much pent : 

 for air at a great distance pent, worketh the same 

 effect with air at large in a small distance. And 

 therefore in the trial of speaking in the well, though 

 the well was deep, the voice came back suddenly* 

 and would bear the report but of two words. 



249. 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 Sein. The room 

 is a chapel or small church. The walls all standing, 

 both at the sides and at the ends. Two rows of 

 pillars, after the manner of isles 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 Sein 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. It is manifest that it is 

 not echoes from several places, but a tossing of the 

 voice, as a ball, to and fro, like to reflexions in look 

 ing glasses, where if you place one glass before and 

 another behind, you shall see the glass behind with 

 the image, within the glass before ; and again, the 



