320 WEATHER. 



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 

 walls-trees with mats or boards, as they may easily 

 do, because such annoyance is seldom of long con- 

 tinuance. 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 we not 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. 



In the sultry season of 1783, honey-dews were 

 so frequent as to deface and destroy the beauties 

 of my garden. My honeysuckles, which were one 

 week the loveliest objects that eye could behold, 

 became the next the most loathsome, being en- 

 veloped in a viscous substance, and loaded with 

 black aphides, or smother-flies. The occasion of 

 this clammy appearance seems to be this, that in 

 hot weather, the effluvia of flowers in fields and 



