NA TURAL HISTOR Y OF SELBORNE. 279 



LETTER LXIV. 



TO THE SAME. 



As the effects of heat are seldom very remarkable in the northerly 

 climate of England, where the summers are often so defective in 

 warmth and sunshine as not to ripen the fruits of the earth so well 

 as might be wished, I shall be more concise in my account of the 

 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 perfection. In 1781 we had 

 none ; in 1783 there were myriads ; which would have devoured all 

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

 nests, and caught thousands with hazel-twigs tipped with bird-lime : 

 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 above- 

 mentioned. 



