surmount it all: are therefore proper to mend thin places in tall hedges.

SYCAMORE.

MAY 12. The sycamore, or great maple, is in bloom, and at this season makes a beautiful appearance, and affords much pabulum for bees, smelling strongly like honey. The foliage of this tree is very fine, and very ornamental to outlets. All the maples have saccharine juices.

GALLS OF LOMBARDY POPLAR.

THE stalks and ribs of the leaves of the Lombardy poplar are embossed with large tumours of an oblong shape, which, by incurious observers, have been taken for the fruit of the tree. These galls are full of small insects, some of which are winged, and some not. The parent insect is of the genus of Cynips. Some poplars in the garden are quite loaded

with these excrescences.

CHESTNUT TIMBER.

JOHN CARPENTER brings home some old chestnut-trees which are very long; in several places the wood-peckers had begun to bore them. The timber and bark of these trees are so very like oak, as might easily deceive an indifferent observer, but the wood is very shaky, and towards the heart cup-shaky (that is to say, apt to separate in round pieces like cups), so that the inward parts are of no use. They were bought for the purpose of cooperage, but must make but ordinary barrels, buckets, &c. Chestnut sells for half the price of oak; but has sometimes been sent into the king's docks, and passed off instead of oak.

LIME BLOSSOMS.

DR. CHANDLER tells, that in the south of France, an infusion of the blossoms of the lime-tree (Tilia) is in much esteem as a remedy for coughs, hoarsenesses, fevers, &c., and that at Nismes, he saw an avenue of limes that was quite ravaged and torn in pieces by people greedily gathering the bloom, which they dried and kept for these purposos.

Upon the strength of this information we made some tea of lime blossoms, and found it a very soft, well flavoured, pleasant, saccharine julep, in taste much resembling the juice of liquorice.

BLACKTHORN.

THIS tree usually blossoms while cold north-east winds blow; so that the harsh rugged weather obtaining at this season is called by the country people, blackthorn winter.

IVY BERRIES.

Ivy berries afford a noble and providential supply for birds in winter and spring; for the first severe frost freezes and spoils all the haws, sometimes by the middle of November; ivy berries do not seem to freeze.

HOPS.

THE culture of Virgil's vines corresponded very exactly with the modern management of hops. I might instance in the perpetual diggings and hoeings, in the tying to the stakes and poles, in pruning the superfluous shoots, &c.; but lately I have observed a new circumstance, which was, neighbouring farmer's harrowing between the rows of hops with a small triangular harrow, drawn by one horse, and guided by two handles. This occurrence brought to my mind the following passage:

66

ipsa

Flectere luctantes inter vineta juvencos."

GEORGIC. II.

Hops are dioecious plants; hence perhaps it might be proper, though not practised, to leave purposely some male plants in every garden, that their farina might impregnate the blossoms. The female plants without their male attendants are not in their natural state: hence we may suppose the frequent failure of crop so incident to hop-grounds; no other growth, cultivated by man, has such frequent and general failures as hops.

Two hop-gardens much injured by a hailstorm, June 5, show now (September 2) a prodigious crop, and larger and

fairer hops than any in the parish. The owners seem now to be convinced that the hail, by beating off the tops of the binds, has increased the side shoots, and improved the crop. Query therefore, should not the tops of hops be pinched off when the binds are very gross and strong?

SEED LYING DORMANT.

THE naked part of the Hanger is now covered with thistles of various kinds. The seeds of these thistles may have lain probably under the thick shade of the beeches for many years, but could not vegetate till the sun and air were admitted. When old beech-trees are cleared away, the naked ground in a year or two becomes covered with straw. berry plants, the seeds of which must have lain in the ground for an age at least. One of the slidders or trenches down the middle of the Hanger, close covered over with lofty beeches near a century old, is still called Strawberry Slidder, though no strawberries have grown there in the memory of man. That sort of fruit, did once, no doubt, abound there, and will again when the obstruction is removed.

BEANS SOWN BY BIRDS.

MANY horsebeans sprang up in my field-walks in the autumn, and are now grown to a considerable height. As the Ewel was in beans last summer, it is most likely that these seeds came from thence; but then the distance is too considerable for them to have been conveyed by mice. It is most probable therefore that they were brought by birds, and in particular by jays and pies, who seem to have hid them among the grass and moss, and then to have forgotten where they had stowed them. Some pease are also growing in the same situation, and probably under the same circumstances.

CUCUMBERS SET BY BEES.

Ir bees, who are much the best setters of cucumbers, do not happen to take kindly to the frames, the best way is to tempt them by a little honey put on the male and female

bloom. When they are once induced to haunt the frames, they set all the fruit, and will hover with impatience round the lights in a morning, till the glasses are opened. Probatum est.

WHEAT.

A NOTION has always obtained, that in England hot summers are productive of fine crops of wheat; yet in the years 1780 and 1781, though the heat was intense, the wheat was much mildewed, and the crop light. Does not severe heat, while the straw is milky, occasion its juices to exude, which being extravasated, occasion spots, discolour the stems and blades, and injure the health of the plants?

TRUFFLES.

AUGUST. A truffle-hunter called on us, having in his pocket several large truffles found in this neighbourhood. He says these roots are not to be found in deep woods, but in narrow hedge-rows and the skirts of coppices. Some truffles, he informed us, lie two feet within the earth, and some quite on the surface; the latter, he added, have little or no smell, and are not so easily discovered by the dogs as those that lie deeper. Half-a-crown a pound was the price which he asked for this commodity.

Truffles never abound in wet winters and springs. They are in season, in different situations, at least nine months in the year.

TREMELLA NOSTOC.

THOUGH the weather may have been ever so dry and burning, yet after two or three wet days, this jellylike substance abounds on the walks.

FAIRY RINGS.

THE cause, occasion, call it what you will, of fairy rings, subsists in the turf, and is conveyable with it; for the turf of my garden-walks, brought from the down above, abounds with those appearances, which vary their shape, and shift situation continually, discovering themselves now in circles,

now in segments, and sometimes in irregular patches and spots. Wherever they obtain, puffballs abound; the seeds of which were doubtless brought in the turf.

METEOROLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS.

BAROMETER.

OVEMBER 22, 1768. A remarkable fall of the barometer all over the kingdom. At Selborne we had no wind, and not much rain; only vast, swagging, rocklike clouds appeared at a distance.

PARTIAL FROST.

THE Country people, who are abroad in winter mornings long before sunrise, talk much of hard frost in some spots, and nore in others. The reason of these partial frosts is obvious, for there are at such times partial fogs about; where the fog obtains, little or no frost appears, but where the air is clear, there it freezes hard. So the frost takes place either on hill or in dale, wherever the air happens to be clearest and freest from vapour.

THAW.

THAWS are sometimes surprisingly quick, considering the small quantity of rain. Does not the warmth at such times come from below? The cold in still, severe seasons seems to come down from above, for the coming over of a cloud in severe nights raises the thermometer abroad at once full ten degrees. The first notices of thaws often seem to appear in vaults, cellars, &c.

If a frost happens, even when the ground is considerably dry, as soon as a thaw takes place, the paths and fields are all in a batter. Country people say that the frost draws moisture. But the true philosophy is, that the steam and vapours continually ascending from the earth, are bound in by the frost, and not suffered to escape till released by the