278 SUMMERS OF 1781 AND 1783. 



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 em- 

 ployed 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 1 783, honey-dews were so frequent 

 as to deface and destroy the beauties of my garden. My 

 honeysuckles, which were one week the most sweet and lovely 

 objects that eye could behold, became the next the most loath- 

 some, being enveloped in a viscous substance, and loaded with 

 black aphides, or smother-flies. The occasion of this clammy 



* There is a wonderful provision in the economy of Nature, by which 

 the numbers of these troublesome marauders are kept within moderate 

 bounds, and but for which they would soon overrun the face of the 

 earth. Every wasp's nest is peopled by several thousands of neuters, or 

 workers. But the neuters, which are first produced, are likewise the 

 first that perish : for not one of them survives the termination of even a 

 mild winter. 



The female wasps are, however, stronger, and can bear the rigours of 

 winter better than either the males or neuters. But several hundreds 

 of the females of every nest perish before the end of the winter, and, 

 indeed, not more than ten or a dozen of each nest survive that season. 

 These females are destined for the continuation of the species, and each 

 of them becomes the founder of a new republic. It is quite uncertain 

 whether any male wasps survive. Every nest, about the beginning of 

 October, presents a strange scene of what appears anomalous cruelty. 

 The wasps then not only desist from bringing nourishment to their 

 young, but also drag them in the caterpillar state from their cells, and 

 expose them to the weather, where they either die for want of food, or 

 become a prey to birds, or, as is more generally the ca?e, the parent wasps 

 pinch them to death with their forceps. But instead of being cruel and 

 unnatural, this is perhaps an act of mercy, as wasps do not lay up a store 

 of food for the winter, and their progeny would consequently die a painful 

 and lingering death from starvation if "left in their cells. So that what 

 appears a transgression of the predominating love of animals for their 

 young is, in fact, a merciful effort of instinct. ED. 



