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and the farmers in the neighbourhood told me the same tale with 
respect to the thistles in their fields; they were very abundant 
and not of the common kinds. Grass was another weed that 
gave great trouble in the gardens ; and for both the grass and the 
thistles we undoubtedly had to thank the hot weather of 1893, 
which ripened every seed. The thistles will probably disappear, 
certainly in gardens and fields where they have not been allowed 
to seed ; the grass may give some little trouble in our flower-beds, 
but it can be easily removed. Of the other pest I mentioned, 
the earwigs, I am not sufficiently an entomologist to say whether 
the abundance this year was at all owing to the last hot summer, 
but everywhere they were very abundant, and their special mission 
seemed to be to make holes in the wall fruit before it was ripe, 
into which the wet entered, and the fruit rotted on the tree. I 
very seldom have been troubled with earwigs in my garden, so if 
this year’s abundance was owing to the bright weather of last 
year, I may hope that the dull weather of this year will clear 
them away. 
I am afraid that among the effects of this year’s dull summer 
must be mentioned a large amount of grumbling; and certainly 
it has not been a year in which there was a prolonged enjoyment 
_ of out-of-door life. Yet like every year, this year with its peculiar 
weather has had its uses, and has had its own special lessons. 
Among the uses must be reckoned the ample supply of rain, 
which will go far to restore the average, and to make up the 
deficiency caused by last year’s drought ; and I certainly have 
learned more than one good lesson in garden work. I have never 
before had the lesson brought home to me so closely that all the 
beauty of our trees, our hedgerows, and our gardens is not 
produced by the particular weather of the one year through which 
e may be passing, but that it can all be traced back to many 
previous years ; perhaps it is not too much to say that whatever 
tl e beauty of a tree or shrub may be this year, it has got some of 
at beauty by little and little in every year of its existence. I 
J 
