CYII1.] OF SELBORNE. 287 



LETTER CVIII. 



TO THE HONOURABLE DAINES BARRING TON. 



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 intensity 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 they did 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 are 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 ; we caught thousands with hazel-twigs tipped 

 with bird-lime : and have since employed the boys to take and 

 destroy the large breeding wasps in the spring. Such expedients 



