HOT SUMMERS. 



257 



from bees, to whom it is very grateful : and we may be assured 

 that it falls in the night, because it is always first seen 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 effluvia from our woodlands 

 temper and moderate our heats. 



LETTER LXV. To THE HON. DAINES HARRINGTON. 



THE summer of the year 1783 was an amazing and portentous 

 one, and full of horrible phsenomena ; for, besides the alarming 

 meteors and tremendous thunder-storms that affrighted and dis- 

 tressed the different counties of this kingdom, the peculiar haze, 

 or smoky fog, that prevailed for many weeks in this island, and 

 in every part of Europe, and even beyond its 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 every quarter without making 

 any alteration in the air. The sun, at noon, looked as blank as 

 a clouded moon, arid 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 irk- 

 some. The country people began to look with a superstitious 

 awe, at the red, lowering 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 



* In more instances than this we may observe that Mr. White had some very vague notions 

 of evaporation ; but that so acute an observer failed to discover the true cause of" honey-dew," 

 is certainly rather surprising. This is now well known to be merely an excrementitious product 

 from the aphides.-r-ED. 



