252 THE NATURAL HISTORY 



and the vast effluvia from our woodlands temper and 

 moderate our heats. 



LETTER LXV 



TO THE HONOURABLE DAINES HARRINGTON 



THE summer of the year 1783 was an amazing and 

 portentous one, and full of horrible phaenomena ; for, 

 besides the alarming 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 its limits, was a most extra- 

 ordinary appearance, unlike anything 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 every quarter 

 without making any alteration in the air. The sun, at 

 noon, looked as blank as a clouded moon, and shed a 

 rust-coloured ferruginous light on the ground, and floors 

 of rooms ; but was particularly lurid and blood-coloured at 

 rising and setting. All the time the heat was so intense 

 that butchers' meat could hardly be eaten on the day after 

 it was killed; and the flies swarmed so in the lanes and 

 hedges that they rendered the horses half frantic, and 

 riding irksome. The country people began to look with 

 a superstitious awe, at the red, louring aspect of the sun ; 

 and indeed there was reason for the most enlightened 

 person to be apprehensive ; for, all the while, Calabria and 

 part of the isle of Sicily, were torn and convulsed with 

 earthquakes ; and about that juncture a volcano sprung 

 out of the sea on the coast of Norway. On this occasion 

 Milton's noble simile of the sun, in his first book of 

 Paradise Lost, frequently occurred to my mind ; and it is 

 indeed particularly applicable, because, towards the end, it 



