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Looking for Child to be on Cover of a New Book, 'The Model Child'
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

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NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Nathan Yungerberg, an accomplished model scout and professional child photographer is launching a nation-wide casting call to find the cover model for his highly anticipated book release, 'The Model Child: A Parents Guide to the Child Modeling Industry' (ISBN: 978-0-9817018-0-6).

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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 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 expedients 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 instanced 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 honey-suckles,
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 in hot weather the effluvia of flowers in fields and
meadows and gardens are drawn up in the day by a brisk
evaporation, and then in the night fall down again with the dews, in
which they are entangled; that the air is strongly scented, and
therefore impregnated with the particles of flowers in summer
weather, our senses will inform us; and that this clammy sweet
substance is of the vegetable kind we may learn from bees, to
whom it is very grateful: and we may be assured that it falls in the
night, because it is always seen first 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 Honourable 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 distressed the
different counties of this kingdom, the peculiar haze, or smokey
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 anything 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 irksome. The country people began to look with
a superstitious awe, at the red, louring 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 volcano sprung out of the sea on the coast of Norway.
On this occasion Milton's noble simile of the sun, in his first book
of Paradise Lost, frequency occurred to my mind; and it is indeed
particularly applicable, because, towards the end, it alludes to a
superstitious kind of dread, with which the minds of men are
always impressed by such strange and unusual phaenomena.

... As when the sun, new risen,
Looks through the horizontal, misty air,
Shorn of his beams; or from behind the moon,
In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds
On half the nations, and with fear of change
Perplexes monarchs....



Letter LXVI
To The Honourable Daines Barrington

We are very seldom annoyed with thunder-storms; and it is no less
remarkable than true, that those which arise in the south have
hardly been known to reach this village; for before they get over us,
they take a direction to the east or to the west, or sometimes divide
into two, and go in part to one of those quarters, and in part to the
other; as was truly the case in summer 1783, when though the
country round was continually harassed with tempests and often
from the south, yet we escaped them all; as appears by my journal
of that summer. The only way that I can at all account for this fact -
- for such it is -- is that, on that quarter, between us and the sea,
there are continual mountains, hill behind hill, such as Nore-hill,
the Barnet, Butser-hill, and Ports-down, which somehow divert the
storms, and give them a different direction. High promontories, and
elevated grounds, have always been observed to attract clouds and
disarm them of their mischievous contents, which are discharged
into the trees and summits as soon as they come in contact with
those turbulent meteors; while the humble vales escape, because
they are so far beneath them.

But, when I say I do not remember a thunder-storm from the south,
I do not mean that we never have suffered from thunder-storms at
all; for on June 5th, 1784, the thermometer in the morning being at
64, and at noon at 70, the barometer at 29, six-tenths one-half, and
the wind north, I observed a blue mist, smelling strongly of
sulphur, hanging along our sloping woods, and seeming to indicate
that thunder was at hand. I was called in about two in the
afternoon, and so missed seeing the gathering of the clouds in the
north; which they who were abroad assured me had something
uncommon in its appearance. At about a quarter after two the
storm began in the parish of Hartley, moving slowly from north to
south; and from thence it came over Norton-farm, and so to
Grange-farm, both in this parish. It began with vast drops of rain,
which were soon succeeded by round hail, and then by convex
pieces of ice, which measured three inches in girth. Had it been as
extensive as it was violent, and of any continuance (for it was very
short), it must have ravaged all the neighbourhood. In the parish of
Hartley it did some damage to one farm; but Norton, which lay in
the centre of the storm, was greatly injured; as was Grange, which
lay next to it. It did but just reach to the middle of the village,
where the hail broke my north windows, and all my garden-lights
and hand-glasses, and many of my neighbours' windows. The
extent of the storm was about two miles in length and one in
breadth. We were just sitting down to dinner; but were soon
diverted from our repast by the clattering of tiles and the jingling of
glass. There fell at the same time prodigious torrents of rain on the
farms above-mentioned, which occasioned a flood as violent as it
was sudden; doing great damage to the meadows and fallows, by
deluging the one and washing away the soil of the other. The
hollow lane towards Alton was so torn and disordered as not to be
passable till mended, rocks being removed that weighed 200
weight. Those that saw the effect which the great hail had on ponds
and pools say that the dashing of the water made an extraordinary
appearance, the froth and spray standing up in the air three feet
above the surface. The rushing and roaring of the hail, as it
approached, was truly tremendous.

Though the clouds at South Lambeth, near London, were at that
juncture thin and light, and no storm was in sight, nor within
hearing, yet the air was strongly electric; for the bells of an electric
machine at that place rang repeatedly, and fierce sparks were
discharged.

When I first took the present work in hand I proposed to have
added an Annus Historico-naturalis, or the Natural History of the
Twelve Months of the Year; which would have comprised many
incidents and occurrences that have not fallen in my way to be
mentioned in my series of letters; -- but, as Mr. Aikin of
Warrington has lately published somewhat of this sort, and as the
length of my correspondence has sufficiently put your patience to
the test, I shall here take a respectful leave of you and natural
history together; and am,

With all due deference and regard,
Your most obliged,
And most humble servant,

GIL. WHITE.

Selborne,
June 25, 1787.

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