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Extraordinary Echoes, and Whispering Places

These are places where a whisper, or other low sound, may be heard from one part to another, to a great distance. They depend on a principle, that the voice, &c. being applied to one end of an arch, easily passes by repeated reflections to the other.

Hence sound is conveyed from one side of a whispering gallery to the opposite one, without being perceived by those who stand in the middle. The form of a whispering-gallery is that of a segment of a sphere, or the like arched figure. All the contrivance in whispering-places is, that near the person who whispers there may be a smooth wall, arched either cylindrically or elliptically. A circular arch will do, but not so well.

The most considerable whispering-places in England are, the whispering-gallery in the dome of St. Paul's, London, where the ticking of a watch may be heard from side to side, and a very easy whisper be sent all round the dome. The famous whispering-place in Gloucester Cathedral, is no other than a gallery above the east end of the choir, leading from one side thereof to the other. It consists of five angles and six sides; the middlemost of which is a naked window, yet two whisperers hear each other at the distance of twenty-five yards.

In the Philosophical Transactions for 1746, there is a letter inserted from Robert Southwell, Esq. in which he gives the following account of some extraordinary whispering-places and echoes.-"The best whispering-place in England," he observes, " I ever saw, was that at Gloucester: but in Italy,