352 OBSERVATIONS ON 



BEANS SOWN BY BIRDS. 



Many horse-beans sprang up in my field-walks in the autumn, 

 and are now grown to a considerable height. As the Ewel was 

 in beans last summer, it is most likely that these seeds came from 

 thence ; but then the distance is too considerable for them to have 

 been conveyed by mice. It is most probable therefore that they 

 were brought by birds, and in particular by jays and pies, who 

 seem to have hid them among the grass and moss, and then to 

 have forgotten where they had stowed them. Some peas are 

 growing also in the same situation, and probably under the same 

 circumstances. 



CUCUMBERS SET BY BEES. 



If bees, who are much the best setters of cucumbers, do not 

 happen to take kindly to the frames, the best way is to tempt 

 them by a little honey put on the male and female bloom. When 

 they are once induced to haunt the frames, they set all the fruit, 

 and will hover with impatience round the lights in a morning, 

 till the glasses are opened. Probatum 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 exsude, 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 



