Our Saxon ancestors certainly had some sort of cabbage, because they call the month of February sprout-cale; * but long after their days, the cultivation of gardens was little attended to. The religious, being men of leisure, and keeping up a constant correspondence with Italy, were the first people among us who had gardens and fruit trees in any perfection, within the walls of their abbeyst and priories. The barons neglected every pursuit that did not lead to war, or tend to the pleasure of the chase. It was not till gentlemen took up the study of horticulture themselves that the knowledge of gardening made such hasty advances. Lord Cobham, Lord Ila, and Mr Waller of Beaconsfield, were some of the first people of rank that promoted the elegant science of ornamenting, without despising the superintendence of the kitchen quarters and fruit walls. I A remark made by the excellent Mr Ray, in his Tour of Europe, at once surprises us, and corroborates what has been advanced above; for we find him observing, so late as his days, that" the Italians use several herbs for salads, which are not yet, or have not been but lately, used in England, viz. selleri, (celery,) which is nothing else but the sweet smallage, the young shoots whereof, with a little of the head of the root cut off, they eat raw with oil and pepper." And farther, he adds, "curled endive, blanched, is much used beyond seas, and, for a raw salad, seemed to excel lettuce itself." Now this journey was undertaken no longer ago than in the year 1663. * The Saxons derived the names of their months from similar causes, -March was called stormy month; May, Trimilki, from cows being milked thrice a day in that month; June was called diet and weed month; and September barley month.. - ED. "In monasteries, the lamp of knowledge continued to burn, however dimly. In them, men of business were formed for the state. The art of writing was cultivated by the monks; they were the only proficients in mechanies, gardening, and architecture.". See DALRYMPLE'S Annals of Scotland. Horticulture has made great progress in Britain since our author's time. Societies have been established, experimental gardens formed, premiums awarded for the best vegetables produced, and an excellent magazine, exclusively devoted to horticultural science, has been published for some years, under the able direction of Mr J. C. Loudon. -ED. LETTER LXXX. TO THE HON. DAINES BARRINGTON. SELBORNE, February 12, 1778. Fortè puer, comitum seductus ab agmine fido, DEAR SIR,-In a district so diversified as this, so full of hollow vales and hanging woods, it is no wonder that echoes should abound. Many we have discovered, that return the cry of a pack of dogs, the notes of a hunting horn, a tunable ring of bells, or the melody of birds, very agreeably; but we were still at a loss for a polysyllabical articulate echo, till a young gentleman, who had parted from his company in a summer evening walk, and was calling after them, stumbled upon a very curious one, in a spot where it might least be expected. At first, he was much surprised, and could not be persuaded but that he was mocked by some boy; but repeating his trials in several languages, and finding his respondent to be a very adroit polyglot, he then discerned the deception. This echo, in an evening before rural noises cease, would repeat ten syllables most articulately and distinctly, especially if quick dactyls were chosen. The last syllables of Tityre, tu patulæ recubans were as audibly and intelligibly returned as the first; and there is no doubt, could trial have been made, but that at midnight, when the air is very elastic, and a dead stillness prevails, one or two syllables more might have been obtained; but the distance rendered so late an experiment very inconvenient. Quick dactyls, we observed, succeeded best; for when we came to try its powers in slow, heavy embarrassed spondees, of the same number of syllables, Monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens we could perceive a return but of four or five.* *There is a very extraordinary echo at a ruined fortress near Lourain in France. If a person sings, he only hears his own voice, without any repetition; on the contrary, those who stand at some distance, hear the echo, but not the voice; but then they hear it with surprising variations, sometimes louder, sometimes softer, now more near, then more distant. All echoes have some one place to which they are returned stronger and more distinct than to any other; and that is always the place that lies at right angles with the object of repercussion, and is not too near, nor too far off. Buildings, or naked rocks, re-echo much more articulately than hanging woods or vales; because, in the latter, the voice is, as it were, entangled, and embarrassed in the covert, and weakened in the rebound. The true object of this echo, as we found by various experiments, is the stone-built, tiled hop-kiln in Gally Lane, which measures in front forty feet, and from the ground to the eaves, twelve feet. The true centrum phonicum, or just distance, is one particular spot in the King's Field, in the path to Norehill, on the very brink of the steep balk above the hollow cart-way. In this case, there is no choice of distance; but the path, by mere contingency, happens to be the lucky, the identical spot, because the ground rises or falls so immediately, if the speaker either retires or advances, that his mouth would at once be above or below the object. We measured this polysyllabical echo with great exactness, and found the distance to fall very short of Dr Plot's rule for distinct articulation; for the Doctor, in his History of Oxfordshire, allows one hundred and twenty feet for the return of each syllable distinctly; hence this echo, which gives ten distinct syllables, ought to measure four hundred yards, or one hundred and twenty feet to each syllable; whereas our distance is only two hundred and fifty-eight yards, or near seventy-five feet to each syllable.* Thus our measure falls short of the Doctor's as five to eight; but then it must be acknowledged, that this candid philosopher was convinced afterwards, that some latitude must be admitted of in the distance of echoes, according to time and place. When experiments of this sort are making, it should always be remembered, that weather and the time of day have a vast There is an account in the Memoirs of the French Academy of a similar echo near Rouen. The building which returns it is a semicircular courtyard; yet every one of the same form does not produce a similar effect.-ED. * A knowledge of the progression of sound is not an article of mere steril curiosity, but in several instances useful; for by this means we are enabled to determine the distance of ships, or other moving bodies. Suppose, for example, that a vessel fires a gun, the sound of which is heard five seconds after the flash is seen, as sound moves one thousand one hundred and forty-two English feet in a second, this number, multiplied by five, gives the distance of five thousand seven hundred and ten feet. The same principle is applicable in storms of lightning and thunder.—ED. 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 phenomenon, 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, 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 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 shewing the least sensibility or resentment. * The organs of hearing in insects are the antennæ, or horn-like processes, which stand out from the forehead. If these organs do not convey sound, in the same manner as the ears of other animals, they are, at least, very sensible of any concussion produced in the atmosphere by sounds, and if not the ears themselves, are, at least, analogous to them. The reflected sound of an echo cannot take place at less than fifty-five feet; because it is necessary that the distance should be such, and the reverberated or reflected sound so long in arriving, that the ear may distinguish clearly between that and the original sound. — ED. 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 may be said than can with truth of every individual of her sex; since she is Quæ nec reticere loquenti, Nec prior ipsa loqui, didicit resonabilis echo. P.S. The classic reader will, I trust, pardon the following lovely quotation, so finely describing echoes, and so poetically acccounting for their causes from popular superstition : Quæ benè quom videas, rationem reddere possis |