SUMMER OF 1783. 279 



appearance seems to be this, that in hot weather, the effluvia 

 of flowers in fields, and meadows, and gardens, are drawn up 

 in the day by a brisk evaporation, and then in the night fall 

 down again with the dews in which they are entangled ; that 

 the air is strongly scented, and therefore impregnated with the 

 particles of flowers in summer weather, our senses will inform 

 *us ; and that this clammy sweet substance is of the vegetable 

 kind, we may learn from bees, to whom it is very grateful ; 

 and we may be assured that it falls in the night, because it is 

 always first seen in warm still mornings. * 



On chalky and sandy soils, and in the hot villages about 

 London, the thermometer has been often observed to mount 

 as high as eighty-three or eighty-four ; but with us, in this 

 hilly and woody district, I have hardly ever seen it exceed 

 eighty, nor does it often arrive at that pitch. The reason, I 

 conclude, is, that our dense clayey soil, so much shaded by 

 trees, is not so easily heated through as those above mentioned ; 

 and, besides, our mountains cause currents of air and breezes ; 

 and the vast effluvia from our woodlands temper and moderate 

 our heats. 



LETTER CIX. 



TO THE HON. DAINES HARRINGTON. 



THE summer of the year 1783, was an amazing and portentous 

 one, and full of horrible phenomena ; for, besides the alarming 

 meteors and tremendous thunder-storms, that affrighted and 

 distressed the different counties of this kingdom, the peculiar 

 haze, or smoky fog, that prevailed for many weeks in this 

 island, and in every part of Europe, and even beyond its 

 limits, was a most extraordinary appearance, unlike any thing 

 known within the memory of man. By my journal, I find 

 that I had noticed this strange occurrence from June twenty- 

 third to July twentieth, inclusive, during which period the wind 

 varied to every quarter, without making any alteration in the 

 air. The sun, at noon, looked as blank as a clouded moon, 

 and shed a rust-coloured ferruginous light on the ground and 

 floors of rooms, but was particularly lurid and blood-coloured 

 at rising and setting. All the time, the heat was so intense 

 that butchers' meat could hardly be eaten the day after it was 

 killed ; and the flies swarmed so in the lanes and hedges, that 

 they rendered the horses half frantic, and riding irksome. The 



* Honey dew is the excrement of the aphides. ED. 



