OF SELSORNE. 243 



afterwards that some latitude must be admitted of in the 

 distance of echoes according to time and place. 1 



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 philoso- 

 phical or mathematical inquiries. 



One should have imagined that echoes, if not entertain- 

 ing, 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 re- 

 moved from their bee-gardens, he adds, 



*' aut ubi concava pulsa 



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. 2 But, if it should be urged, that 



1 It is evident too, as. Mr. B&nnett hag observed, from the previous 

 statement of the different number of syllables returned by the echo, 

 according to whether they were quick dactyls or heavy spondees, that 

 some allowance must be made on this account also. ED. 



2 This was the opinion of Linnaeus and Bonnet, naturalists of the 

 highest authority. But, as Mr. Bennett has remarked, " repeated ob- 

 servations and experiments have since shown that many insects possesa 

 the sense of hearing. Without the aid of experiment it might, indeed, 

 almost be regarded as established, that in those cases in which the 

 faculty of producing sound is possessed by one sex of an animal, that of 

 hearing it should belong to the other sex ; and it would seem rather 



