84 BRITISH BEES. 



quisite. At Veit-el-Fakeh, wax from the mountainous 

 country of Yemen is exchanged for European goods and 

 for spices from the further Indies. In Syria and Pales- 

 tine \ve find bees abound. At Ladakiah there are large 

 exports both of honey and wax ; and the honey of Ain- 

 nete, on the declivities of the Lebanon, is considered the 

 finest of the whole of that mountain-range. Antonine 

 the Martyr, in the seventh century, speaks of the honey 

 of Nazareth being most excellent, and in the present 

 day bees are extensively cultivated at Bethlehem, for the 

 sake of the profit derived from the wax tapers supplied 

 to the pilgrims. Some of the members of the German 

 colony at Wadi Urtas speak of the purchase of eleven 

 beehives at this place, and express themselves as very 

 sanguine of an abundant harvest from the luxuriance and 

 profusion of flowers, although they say the bees are 

 smaller than those of Westphalia, and are of a yellowish- 

 brown colour. The eastern side of this peninsula, espe- 

 cially the district of Oman, is wholly destitute of bees, 

 contrasting thus unfavourably with its western fertility. 

 The enormous quantities of honey produced may be 

 comparatively estimated by the collateral production of 

 beeswax, which it exceeds by at least ten to one. When 

 we reflect upon what masses of the latter are consumed 

 in the rites of the Roman Catholic and Greek churches 

 throughout the many and large countries where those 

 religions prevail, we shall be able to form a general esti- 

 mate of the extensiveness and universalitv of the cultiva- 



tf 



tion of bees. Nor are those the only uses to which wax is 



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applied, and the collective computation of its consump- 

 tion will show that bees abound in numbers almost 

 transcending belief. 



The name of hougie for wax-candle or taper, is used 



