362 OBSERVATIONS ON 



bloom. When they are once induced to haunt the frames, 

 they set all the fruit, and wiU hover with impatience round 

 the lights in a morning, till the glasses are opened. Pro- 

 batum est. 



WHEAT. 



A NOTION has always obtained, that in England hot summers 

 are productive of fine crops of wheat; yet in the years 1780 

 and 1781, though the heat was intense, the wheat was much 

 mildewed, and the crop light. Does not severe heat, while 

 the straw is milky, occasion its juices to exude, which being 

 extravasated, occasion spots, discolour the stems and blades, 

 and injure the health of the plants ? 



TRUFFLES. 



AUGUST. A truffle-hunter called on us, having in his pocket 

 several large truffles found in this neighbourhood. He 

 says these roots are not to be found in deep woods, but in 

 narrow hedge-rows and the skirts of coppices. Some truffles, 

 he informed us, lie two feet within the earth, and some quite 

 on the surface ; the latter, he added, have little or no smell, 

 and are not so easily discovered by the dogs as those that 

 lie deeper. Half-a- crown a pound was the price which he 

 asked for this commodity. 



Truffles never abound in wet winters and springs. They 

 are in season, in different situations, at least nine months in 

 the year. 



TREMELLA NOSTOC. 



THOUGH the weather may have been ever so dry and burning, 

 yet after two or three wet days, this jelly like substance 

 abounds on the walks. 



FAIRY RINGS. 



THE cause, occasion, call it what you will, of fairy rings, 

 subsists in the turf, and is conveyable with it; for the turf 

 of my garden- walks, brought from the down above, abounds 

 with those appearances, which vary their shape, and shift 

 situation continually, discovering themselves now in circles, 



