244 NATURAL HISTORY 



though they cannot hear, yet perhaps they may feel the re- 

 percussion 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 an- 

 other 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 : 1 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 showing the least sensibility or resentment. 



preposterous to grant tlie existence of a sense in one sex of an insect, 

 and deny it to the other. Gilbert White, in his Letter respecting the 

 field cricket (XLVL), although in the earlier part of it he seems to 

 guard himself from admitting that these insects hear by assuming that 

 they feel ; a person's footsteps as he advances,' must be regarded as 

 insinuating the possession of that sense when he subsequently remarks 

 that ' the males only make that shrilling noise, perhaps out of rivalry 

 and emulation ' a rivalry and emulation which could not be excited in 

 others by a sound unheard by them. 



" But reasoning and conjecture are both equally unnecessary in a 

 case in which direct observation may be adduced in proof. Brunelli's 

 experiments seem on this point altogether satisfactory, and to prove 

 that both the males and the females possess the sense of hearing. He 

 kept several males of the large green grasshopper in a closet, where they 

 were very merry and continued singing all the day ; but a tap at the 

 door would 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 subsequent experiments were not open to such an objection. 

 Pie 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." 



1 ThL statement has recently received some confirmation from the 

 experiments of Sir John Lubbock, " Journ. Linn. Soc." 1874. ED. 



