216 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



of Oxfordshire, allows a hundred and twenty feet for the 

 return of each syllable distinctly ; hence this echo, which 

 gives ten distinct syllables, ought to measure four hundred 

 yards, or one hundred and twenty feet to each syllable ; 

 whereas our distance is only two hundred and fifty-eight 

 yards, or near seventy-five feet, to each syllable. Thus 

 our measure falls short of the Doctor's as five to eight ; 

 but then it must be acknowledged that this candid 

 philosopher was convinced afterwards, that some latitude 

 must be admitted of in the distance of echoes according to 

 time and place. 



When experiments of this sort are making, it should 

 always be remembered that weather and the time of day 

 have a vast 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 phenomenon, since it may become the subject of 

 philosophical or mathematical inquiries. 



One should have imagined that echoes, if not enter- 

 taining, must at least have been harmless and inoffensive j 

 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-garden, he adds 



- ' ' aut ubi concava pulsu 



Saxa sonant, vocisque otfensa resultat imago." 



