OF SELBORNE. 309 



for the prolix account of the degrees of cold, and the in- 

 conveniences 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 wo 

 not set the boys to take the nests, and caught thousands 

 with hazel twigs tipped with birdlime : 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 honeydews 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 behold, 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 seeins to be this, that 



