CVni.] OF SELBORNE. 
LETTER CVIIT. 
TO THE HONOURABLE DAINES BARRING TOX. 
As the effects of heat are seldom very remarkable in the 
northerly climate of England, where the summers are often 
so defective in warmth and sunshine as not to ripen the fruits 
of the earth so well as might he wished, I shall be more concise 
in my account of the intensity of a summer season, and so 
make a little amends for the prolix account of the degrees of 
cold, and the inconveniences 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 were 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 they did 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 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 1781 
we had none ; in 1783 there w^ere myriads ; which would have 
devoured all the j)roduce 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 emjDloyed the boys to take and 
destroy the large breeding wasps in the sjiring. Such expedients 
