OF SELBORNE. 329 
my apples were coddled, as it were, on the trees, so 
that they had no quickness of flavour, and would 
not keep in the winter. ‘This circumstance put me 
in mind of what I have heard travellers assert, that 
they never ate a good apple or apricot in the south 
of Europe, where the heats were so great as to 
render the juices vapid and insipid. 
The great pests of a garden are wasps, which 
destroy all the finer fruits just as they are coming 
into perfection. In 1781 we had none; in 1783 
there were myriads, which would have devoured 
all the produce of my garden had we not set the 
boys to take the nests, and caught thousands with 
hazel-twigs tipped with bird-lime: we have since 
employed the boys to take and destroy the large 
wasps in the spring. Such expedients have a great 
effect on these marauders, and will keep them 
under. Though wasps do not abound but in hot 
summers, yet they do not prevail in every hot 
summer, as I have instanced in the two years 
above mentioned.* 
In the sultry season.of 1783, honey-dews were 
so frequent as to deface and destroy the beauties of 
my garden. My honeysuckles, which were one 
week the loveliest objects that eye could behold, 
became the next the most loathsome, being envel- 
* Wasps abound in woody, wild districts, far from neighbour- 
hoods ; they feed on flowers, and catch flies and caterpillars to 
carry to their young. Wasps make their nests with the rasp- 
ings of sound timber; hornets, with what they gnaw from de- 
cayed ; these particles of wood are kneaded up with a mixture 
of saliva from their bodies, and moulded into combs. 
When there is no fruit in the gardens, wasps eat flies, and 
suck the honey from flowers, from ivy blossoms, and umbellated 
lants: they carry off also flesh from butchers’ shambles.~- 
HITE’S Observations on Insects. 
BE 2 
