OF SELBORNE. 395 



severity of a summer season, and so make a little 

 amends for the prolix account of the degrees of cold, 

 and the inconveniences that we suffered from some late 

 rigorous winters. 



The summers of 1781 and 1783 were unusually hot 

 and dry; to them therefore I shall turn back in my 

 journals, without recurring to any more distant period. 

 In the former of these years my peach and nectarine 

 trees suffered so much from the heat that the rind on 

 the bodies was scalded and came off; since which the 

 trees have been in a decaying state. This may prove 

 a hint to assiduous gardeners to fence and shelter their 

 wall-trees with mats or boards, as they may easily do, 

 because such annoyance is seldom of long continuance. 

 During that summer also, I observed that my apples 

 were coddled, as it were, on the trees ; so that they had 

 no quickness of flavour, and would not keep in the 

 winter. This circumstance put me in mind of what I 

 have heard travellers assert, that they never ate a good 

 apple or apricot in the south of Europe, where the heats 

 were so great as to render the juices vapid and insipid. 



The great pests of a garden are wasps, which destroy 

 all the finer fruits just as they are coming into per- 

 fection. In 1781 we had none ; in 1783 there were 

 myriads ; which would have devoured all the produce 

 of my garden, had we not set the boys to take the nests, 

 and caught thousands with hazel twigs tipped with 

 birdlime : we have since employed the boys to take 

 and destroy the large breeding wasps in the spring. 

 Such expedients have a great effect on these marauders, 

 and will keep them under. Though wasps do not 

 abound but in hot summers, yet they do not prevail in 

 every hot summer, as I have instanced in the two years 

 abovementioned. 



In the sultry season of 1783 honeydews were so fre- 

 quent as to deface and destroy the beauties of my 

 garden. My honeysuckles, which were one week the 

 most sweet and lovely objects that the eye could behold, 



