Gilbert White shouts at bees

Sitting out on the towpath with some folk from Australia, who keep bees near Melbourne and took a keen interest in the size and variety of the bumble bees that were busy along the hedge, I recalled this episode from Gilbert White’s Natural History of Selborne; here, in Letter 38 to Daines Barrington, he considers echos and examines the effect of sound on bees, by shouting at them“One should have imagined that echoes, it 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 pulsuSaxa sonant, vocisque offensa resultat imago.Or where the arching rocks reverberate when struck, and the sound, hurled back, rebounds in an echoGeorgics, IV, 49"This wild and fanciful assertion will hardly be admitted by the philosophers of these days; especially as they all…