NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 279 
Ee PL TV, 
TO THE SAME, 
AS the effects of heat are seldom very remarkable in the northerly 
climate of England, where the summers are often so defective in 
warmth and sunshine as not to ripen the fruits of the earth so well 
as might be wished, I shall be more concise in my account of the 
severity of a summer season, and so make a little amends for the 
prolix account of the degrees of cold, and the inconveniences that 
we suffered from some late rigorous winters. 
The summers of 1781 and 1783 were unusually hot and dry; to 
them therefore I shall turn back in my journals, without recurring 
to any more distant period. In the former of these years my peach 
and nectarine trees suffered so much from the heat that the rind on 
the bodies was scalded and came off; since which the trees have 
been in a decaying state. This may prove a hint to assiduous 
gardeners to fence and shelter their wall-trees with mats or boards, 
as they may easily do, because such annoyance is seldom of long 
continuance. During that summer also, I observed that 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 not we 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 
breeding 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. 
