OF SELBORNE. 271 



lovely objects that the eye could behold, became the next the 

 most loathsome ; being enveloped in a viscous substance, and 

 loaded with black aphides, or smother-flies. The occasion of 

 this clammy appearance seems to be this, that in hot weather the 

 effluvia of flowers in fields and meadows and gardens are drawn 

 up in the day by a brisk evaporation, and then in the night 

 fall down again with the dews, in which they are entangled ; 

 that the air is strongly scented, and therefore impregnated 

 with the particles of flowers in summer weather, our senses 

 will inform us ; and that this clammy sweet substance is of 

 the vegetable kind we may learn from bees, to whom it is very 

 grateful : and we may be assured that it falls in the night, 

 because it is always seen first in warm still mornings. 



On chalky and sandy soils, and in the hot villages about 

 London, the thermometer has been often observed to mount as 

 high as 83 or 84; but with us, in this hilly and woody 

 district, I have hardly ever seen it exceed 80 ; nor does it 

 often arrive at that pitch. The reason, I conclude, is, that 

 our dense clayey soil, so much shaded by trees, is not so 

 easily heated through as those above-mentioned: and, besides, 

 our mountains cause currents of air and breezes; and the vast 

 ctll u via from our woodlands temper and moderate our heats. 



LETTER LXV. 



TO THE SAME. 



THE summer of the year 1783 was an amazing and portentous 

 one, and full of horrible phenomena ; for, besides the alarm- 

 ing meteors and tremendous thunder-storms that affrighted 

 and distressed the different counties of this kingdom, the 

 peculiar haze, or smokey fog, that prevailed for many weeks 

 in this island, and in every part of Europe, and even beyond 

 it's limits, was a most extraordinary appearance, unlike any 

 thing known within the memory of man. By my journal I 

 find that I had noticed this strange occurrence from June 23 

 to July 20 inclusive, during which period the wind varied to 



