The Natural History of Selborne 449 



BEANS SOWN BY BIRDS. 



MANY horse-beans sprang up in my field- walks in the autumn, 

 and are now grown to a considerable height. As the Ewel was in 

 beans last summer, it is most likely that these seeds came from 

 thence ; but then the distance is too considerable for them to have 

 been conveyed by mice. It is most probable therefore that they 

 were brought by birds, and in particular by jays and pies, who 

 seem to have hid them among the grass and moss, and then to have 

 forgotten where they had stowed them. Some pease are growing 

 also in the same situation, and probably under the same circum- 

 stances. WHITE. 



CUCUMBERS SET BY BEES. 



IF bees, who are much the best setters of cucumbers, do not 

 happen to take kindly to the frames, the best way is to tempt them 

 by a little honey put on the male and female bloom. When they 

 are once induced to haunt the frames, they set all the fruit, and will 

 hover with impatience round the lights in a morning, till the glasses 

 are opened. Probatum est. WHITE. 



WHEAT. 



A NOTION has always obtained that in England hot summers are 

 productive of fine crops of wheat ; yet in the years 1780 and 1781, 

 though the heat was intense, the wheat was much mildewed, and 

 the crop light. Does not severe heat, while the straw is milky, 

 occasion its juices to exude, which being extravasated, occasion 

 spots, discolour the stems and blades, and injure the health of the 

 plants ? WHITE. 



2 F 



