INSECTS PRODUCING WAX, EESIN, HONEY, MANNA. 85 



species of bee (Apis) at Sydney. It inhabits the 

 hollow portions of decayed trees, lives together in 

 prodigious numbers, appears to have no sting, and 

 produces a brown- coloured wax, and an excellent 

 description of honey. This is all we know of it at 

 present. If it has no sting, it is probably not an 

 Apis. 



In time of war, the ancient Egyptians used to 

 place implicit trust in their sacred beetles ; but bees 

 have been employed as more efficacious instruments- 

 of war. Lesser reports that in 1525 a mob of pea- 

 sants, who endeavoured to pillage the house of a 

 gentleman, were dispersed by the servants of the 

 latter, who flung some ten or twenty bee-hives into 

 the mob. We have read somewhere than an Ame- 

 rican slave ship was boarded and captured by means 

 of bee-hives. 



Honey is formed from the sugar secreted in the 

 nectaries of flowers. It is composed of two distinct 

 kinds of sugar, known to chemists as grape-sugar 

 and liquid sugar, which both differ essentially from 

 cane or beet-root sugar, though their composi- 

 tion is similar. They are less sweet than the latter. 

 Liquid- sugar cannot be made to crystallize like the 

 other varieties. 



The sweet liquid extracted from the nectaries of 

 flowers possesses most of the properties we observe 

 in the honey of the bee. Some flowers contain a 



