This piece shows the level of dedication Gilbert White had towards his investigations of natural history. Anyone trying this today would probably have their sanity questioned.
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. …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 of 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.
Some of the more dedicated modern beekeepers read poetry to their bees ! I have been advised to talk to my bees when I become a beekeeper.
Interesting. wonder what’s happening? sympathetic buzzing?
On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 6:57 PM, texthistory
I love these snippets. They conjur up the funniest pictures in my head…
I love them too, but it also shows how science really began – as a priori investigations, as people being curious about the world they lived in.
On Wed, Jan 30, 2013 at 11:40 AM, texthistory