246 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE, 
the earth so well as might be wished, I shall be more concise 
in my account of the severity 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 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 flavor 
and would 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 were so great as to render the juices vapid 
and insipid. 
The great pests of a garden are wasps, which destroy all the 
fine 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 not we set the 
boys to take the nests, and caught thousands with hazel-twigs 
tipped with bird-lime: we have since employed the boys to take 
and destroy the large breeding wasps in the spring. . Such ex- 
pedients have a great effect on 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 in- 
stanced in the two years above mentioned. 
In the sultry season of 1783, honey-dews were so frequent 
as to deface and destroy the beauties of my garden. My 
: 
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