2U 
NATURAL HISTORY 
thougli 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 : ^ 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 (XLVI.), 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. 
He 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." 
^ Thi:^ statement has recently received some confirmation from the 
experiments of Sir John Lubbock, " Journ. Linn. Soc." 1874. — Ed. 
