HOT SUMMERS. 
257 
from bees, to whom it is very grateful : and we may be assured 
that it falls in the night, because it is always first seen 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. To the Hon. DAINES BARRINGTON. 
The summer of the year 1783 was an amazing and portentous 
one, and full of horrible phaenomena ; for, besides the alarming 
meteors and tremendous thunder-storms that affrighted and dis- 
tressed 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 appearance, unlike any thing known within the 
memory of man. By my journal I find that I had noticed this 
strange occurrence from June 23 to July 20 inclusive, during 
which period the wind varied to every quarter without making 
any alteration in the air. The sun, at noon, looked as blank as 
a clouded moon, and shed a rust-coloured ferruginous light on 
the ground, and floors of rooms ; but was particularly lurid and 
blood-coloured at rising and setting. All the time the heat was 
so intense that butchers' meat could hardly be eaten on the day 
after it was killed ; and the flies swarmed so in the lanes and 
hedges that they rendered the horses half frantic, and riding irk- 
some. The country people began to look with a superstitious 
awe, at the red, lowering aspect of the sun ; and indeed there was 
reason for the most enlightened person to be apprehensive ; for, 
all the while, Calabria and part of the isle of Sicily were torn 
and convulsed with earthquakes ; and about that juncture a 
* In more instances than this we may observe that Mr. White had some very vague notions 
of evaporation ; but that so acute an observer failed to discover the true cause of " honey-dew," 
is certainly rather surprising. This is now well known to be merely an excremeutitious product 
from the aphides. — Ed. 
s 
