OF 8ELE0RNE, 
'609 
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 circumstange 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 we 
not set the boys to take the n^sts, 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 
^^n 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 seems to be this, that 
