320 NATURAL HISTORY 



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 distance of a mile, and still 

 these insects pursued their various employments undis- 

 turbed, 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 quickset 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. 



immediately silence them. In this instance they might, perhaps, have 

 been affected by the concussion of the air ; and the result might rather 

 have been owing to acuteness of touch than to hearing. But his subse- 

 quent experiments were not open to such an objection. He learned to 

 imitate the chirping of these grasshoppers : and when he did this at the 

 door of the closet in which they were kept, they soon began to answer 

 him ; at first by the gentle chirpings of a few, and then by a full chorus of 

 the whole of them. He afterwards enclosed a male grasshopper in a 

 box, and placed it in one part of his garden, leaving a female at liberty 

 in a distant part of it : as soon as the male began to sing, the female 

 immediately hopped away towards him. This latter experiment was 

 frequently repeated, and in every case the female, as soon as the male 

 began to chirp, hastened to join him. E. T. B. 



