NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 215 



midnight, when the air is very elastic, and a dead stillness 

 prevails, one or two syllables more might have been 

 obtained ; but the distance rendered so late an experiment 

 very inconvenient. 



Quick dactyls, we observed, succeeded best ; for when we 

 came to try its powers in slow, heavy, embarrassed spondees 

 of the same number of syllables, 



" Monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens . , ," 



we could perceive a return but of four or five. 



All echoes have some one place to which they are 

 returned stronger and more distinct than to any other; 

 and that is always the place that lies at right angles with 

 the object of repercussion, and is not too near, nor too far 

 off. Buildings, or naked rocks, re-echo much more articu- 

 lately than hanging woods or vales ; because in the latter 

 the voice is as it were entangled, and embarrassed in the 

 covert, and weakened in the rebound. 



The true object of this echo, as we found by various 

 experiments, is the stone-built, tiled hop-kiln in Gally-lane, 

 which measures in front forty feet, and from the ground to 

 the eaves twelve feet. The true centrum phonicum, or just 

 distance, is one particular spot in the king's field, in the 

 path to Nore-hill, on the very brink of the steep balk above 

 the hollow cart-way. In this case there is no choice of 

 distance ; but the path, by mere contingency, happens to 

 be the lucky, the identical spot, because the ground rises 

 or falls so immediately, if the speaker either retires or 

 advances, that his mouth would at once be above or below 

 the object. 



We measured this polysyllabical echo with great exact- 

 ness, and found the distance to fall very short of Dr. Plot's 

 rule for distinct articulation ; for the Doctor, in his history 



