270 NATURAL HISTORY 



northerly climate of England, where the summers are often 

 so defective in warmth and sun-shine as not to ripen the fruits 

 of the earth so well as might be wished, I shall be more con- 

 cise 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 late ri- 

 gorous 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 w r as 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 continu- 

 ance. 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 ma- 

 rauders, 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 men- 

 tioned. 



In the sultry season of 1783 honey-dews were so frequent 

 as to deface and destroy the beauties of my garden. My 

 honey-suckles, which were one week the most sweet and 



