OF SELBOBNE: 2t5 
Some time since its discovery, this echo is become totally 
silent, though the object or hop-kiln remains: nor Is there 
any mystery in this defect ; for the field between is planted 
as a hop-garden, and the voice of the speaker is totally ab- 
sorbed and lost among the poles and entangled foliage of 
the hops. And when the poles are removed in autumn, 
the disappointment is the same, because a tall quickset 
hedge, nurtured up for the purpose of shelter to the hop- 
ground, entirely interrupts the impulse and repercussion of 
the voice : so that, till those obstructions are removed, no 
more of its garrulity can be expected. 
Should any gentleman of fortune think an echo in his 
park, or outlet, a pleasing incident, he might build one at 
little or no expense. For whenever he had occasion for a 
new barn, stable, dog-kennel, or the like structure, it would 
be only needful to erect this building on the gentle declivity 
of a hill, with a like rising opposite to it, at a few hundred 
yards^ distance ; and perhaps success might be the easier 
ensured, could some canal, lake, or stream intervene. From 
a seat at the centrum phoniciim, he and his friends might 
amuse themselves sometimes of an evening with the prattle 
of this loquacious nymph ; of whose complacency and decent 
reserve more may be said than can with truth of every in- 
dividual of her sex ; since she is 
" quae nec reticere loqnenti, 
Nee prior ipsa loqui didieit resonabilis eeho.'* 
P. S. — The classic reader will, I trust, pardon the follow- 
ing lovely quotation, so finely describing echoes, and so 
poetically accounting for their causes from popular super- 
stition : 
" QusB bene quom videas, rationem reddere possis 
Tute tibi atque aliis, quo pacto per loca sola 
Saxa pareis formas verborum ex ordine reddant, 
Palanteis comites quom monteis inter opacos 
Quserimus, et magna dispersos voce ciemus. 
Sex etiam, aut septem loca vidi reddere voces 
Unam quom jaceres : ita coUes coUibus ipsis 
Verba repulsantes iterabant dicta referre. 
Haec loca capripedes Satyros, Nymphasque tenere 
Finitimi fingunt, et Faunos esse loquuntur ; 
Quorum noctivago strepitu, ludoque jocanti 
