394 PECULIARITIES OF 



roasted and sodden by the heat, few obtaining their 

 natural size, and sold at this period in the Bristol 

 market at twenty-four shillings the sack. A few 

 choice plants were saved by watering them daily ; 

 but in general the exhalation from the foliage, by 

 reason of the heat of the earth, was greater than the 

 root could supply, the green parts withering as if 

 seared by a frost. 



On the 20th of July some farmers began to cut 

 their wheat ; and by the 25th reaping had generally 

 commenced. Our bean crop presented, perhaps, 

 an unprecedented instance of early ripeness, being 

 usually mowed in September ; but this year it was 

 universally ripe, indeed more perfectly so than the 

 wheat by the 1st of August. The crop, however, 

 proved a defective one : water became scarce, and 

 the herbage of the fields afforded so little nutriment, 

 that the cows nearly lost their milk, eight or ten 

 being milked into a pail that four should have 

 filled ; and one week, from July the 18th to the 

 24th, butter could not be made to harden, but re- 

 mained a soft oleaginous mass. 



This extreme heat had a favourable influence on 

 many of our exotic plants, enabling several to per- 

 fect their seed, which do not usually in our climate ; 

 such as night-stocks, erodiums, heliotrope, ground- 

 sels, cape-asters, and such green-house plants vege- 

 tating in the open air. With me all the polyan- 

 thus tribe, especially the double varieties, suffered 

 greatly; lovers of the cold and moisture of a 

 northern climate, in this tropic heat, they became 



