234 



ECHOES. 



latitude- must be admitted of ia 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 aU 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. Nov 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 annoy- 

 ances, such as prudent ovmers would ynah far removed from 

 their bee-gardens, he adds, 



' Aut ubi concava pulsu 



Saxa sonant, vocisque offensa resultat imago.' 



Or where the hollow rocks emit a sound, 

 And echoed voices from the cliffs rebound. 



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.* 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. Tet that these 

 impressions are distasteful or hurtful I deny, because bees, 

 in good summers, thrive weU in my outlet, where the echoes 

 are very strong; for this village is another Anathoth, a 



* Bees certainly utter a murmuring sound wlien their hives have been 

 tapped in the still of the evening as I have frequently ascertained. The chirp- 

 ing of the house-cricket is probably to induce the female to come to it.- — Ed. 



