The Natural History of Selborne

Tulips are faded. Honey-suckles still in beauty. My columbines are very beautiful: tyed some of the stems with pieces of worsted, to mark them for seed. Planted-out pots of green cucumbers. Dr Derham says, that all cold summers are wet summers: & the reason he gives is that rain is the effect and not the cause of cold. But with all due deference to that great Philosopher, I think, he should rather have said, that most cold summers are dry; For it is certain that sometimes cold summers are dry; as for example, this very summer hitherto: & in the summer 1765 the weather was very dry, & very cool. See Physico-theol: p: 22. Vast honey-dews this week. The reason of these seems to be, that in hot days the effluvia of flowers are drawn-up by a brisk evaporation; and then in the night fall down with the dews, with which they are entangled. This very clammy substance is very grateful to bees, who gather it with great assiduity, but it is injurious to the trees on which it happens to fall, by stopping the pores of the leaves. The greatest quantity falls in still, close weather; beacuse winds disperse it, & copious dews dilute it, & prevent its ill effects. It falls mostly in hazey warm weather.