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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 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 in- 

 form 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 seen first 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 83 or 84 ; but with us, in this hilly and woody 

 district, I have hardly ever seen it exceed 80 ; 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 LXV 



The summer of the year 1783 was an amazing and por- 

 tentous one, and full of horrible phsenomena ; 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 



