204 NATURAL HISTORY OP SELBORNE. 



enumerating some probable and reasonable annoyances, such as 

 prudent owners would wish far removed from their bee-gardens, 

 he adds 



" aut ubi concava pulsu 



Saxa sonant, vocisque offensa resultat imago." 



This wild and fanciful assertion will hardly be admitted by 

 the philosophers of these days ; especially as they all 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 capa- 

 ble 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 dis- 

 tance of a mile, and still these insects pursued their various em- 

 ployments undisturbed, 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 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 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 these obstructions are re- 

 moved 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 ex- 

 pense. 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 per- 

 haps 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 



