214 ECHOES. 



influence on an echo ; for a dull, heavy, moist air deadens and 

 clogs the sound ; and hot sunshine renders the air thin and 

 weak, and deprives it of all its springiness ; and a ruffling wind 

 quite defeats the whole. In a still, clear, dewy evening, the 

 air is most elastic ; and perhaps the later the hour the more so. 



Echo has always been so amusing to the imagination, that 

 the poets have personified her ; and, in their hands, she has 

 been the occasion of many a beautiful fiction. Nor need the 

 gravest man be ashamed to appear taken with such a pheno- 

 menon, since it may become the subject of philosophical or 

 mathematical inquiries. 



One should have imagined that echoes, if not entertaining, 

 must at least have been harmless and inoffensive : yet Virgil 

 advances a strange notion, that they are injurious to bees. 

 After 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 hear- 

 ing 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 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 shewing 

 the least sensibility or resentment. 



* The organs of hearing in insects are the antennae, or horn-like 

 processes, which stand out from the forehead. If these organs do not 

 convey sound, in the same manner as the ears of other animals, they are, 

 at least, very sensible of any concussion produced in the atmosphere by 

 sounds, and if not the ears themselves, are, at least, analogous to them. 

 The reflected sound of an echo cannot take place at less than fifty-five 

 feet ; because it is necessary that the distance should be such, and the 

 reverberated or reflected sound so long in arriving, that the ear may 

 distinguish clearly between that and the original sound. ED. 



