204 
NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
enumerating some probable and reasonable annoyances, such as 
prudent owners would wish far removed from their bee-gardens, 
he adds 
** aut ubi concava pulsu 
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. 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. 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 another Anathoth, a place of responses or echoes. Besides, it 
does not appear from experiment that bees are in any way capa- 
ble 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 dis- 
tance of a mile, and still these insects pursued their various em- 
ployments undisturbed, and without showing the least sensibility 
or resentment. 
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 absorbed 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 quick-set hedge, nurtured up for the purpose of 
shelter to the hop-ground, entirely interrupts the impulse and 
repercussion of the voice : so that till these obstructions are re- 
moved 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 ex- 
pense. 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 hke 
rising opposite to it, at a few hundred yards distance ; and per- 
haps success might be the easier ensured could some canal, lake, 
or stream, intervene. From a seat at the centrum phonicum he 
and his friends might amuse themselves sometimes of an evening 
with the prattle of this loquacious nymph ; of whose complacency 
