apricot, in the south of Europe, where the heats 

 are 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 178 1 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 ; we caught thousands with hazel-twigs 

 tipped with bird-lime : and 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 then, 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 

 most sweet and lovely objects that the eye could be- 

 hold, became, the next, the most loathsome ; being 

 enveloped 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 mead- 

 ows, 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 



192 



