TRUFFLES. 301 



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 peas 

 are growing also in the same situation, and probably under the 

 same circumstances. 



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. 



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 mil- 

 dewed, 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 ? 



TRUFFLES. 



AUGUST. A truffle-hunter called on us, having in his pocket 

 several large truffles found in this neighbourhood. He says these 

 roots are not to be found in deep woods, but in narrow hedge- 

 rows and the skirts of coppices.f Some truffles, he informed us, 

 lie two feet within the earth, and some quite on the surface ; the 

 latter, he added, have little or no smell, and are not so easily 



* These birds are in the continual habit of thus sowing beans, acorns, and the like, so that 

 many lofty mnnarchs of the forest may have originated through their ageucy. The common 

 squirrel does the same. ED. 



t " Roots" is rather a faulty term by which to distinguish these curious vegetable productions, 

 which are a species of underground fungus. ED. 



