He ee He eae 
Pil ‘eA; q 
« se- ue 
| , 
THE NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE, I9I 
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 all 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. Nor need the 
gravest man be ashamed to appear taken with such a phenom- 
enon, 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 annoyances, 
such as prudent owners would wish far removed from their 
bee-gardens, he adds — 
* Nor place them where too deep a water flows, 
Nor hollow rocks that render back the sound, 
Nor double images of the voice rebound.” 
DRYDEN’S VIRGIL, Georg. iv. 
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 hear- 
ing at all. But if it should be urged, that though they cannot 
hear, yet perhaps they may feel the repercussions 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 and 
echoes. Besides, it does not appear from experiment that 
bees are in any way capable of being affected by sounds; for I 
