able
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 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 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.

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 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
phonicum_ 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