NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE 235 



LETTER LXIV 



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 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 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, with- 

 out 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. Dur- 

 ing that summer also, I observed that my apples were coddled, 

 as it were, on the trees ; so that they had no quickness of flavor, 

 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. 



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

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



