USES AND VALUE OF HONEY. 157 



spring/ 5 At all events, we read repeatedly of honey as 

 secondary to milk alone amongst the flowing bounties of the 

 Promised Land; and throughout the nations of antiquity, 

 sacred and profane, the busy communities of Bees seem to have 

 held in those of the human race, a degree of importance, which 

 sufficiently attests their value as tax-gatherers on the vegetable 

 kingdom. 



And why were Bees " immortalised " in the verse of Virgil,, 

 except on the same principle as that which led man to deify 

 his brother man? It was wholly for their usefulness, since 

 there is little doubt, that, but for their important economic 

 service, their own wonderful economy would have been as much 

 overlooked, as it was misapprehended. Ants, it is true, with 

 no such claim upon human notice, attracted it scarcely less, 

 witness the ancient "records of their wars;" but these are com- 

 paratively recent, and it is likely that the marvels of Apian 

 monarchies first led to observation of the ways and wonders of 

 Pismire Republics. 



Of the value of honey and its extensive use, we, in our own 

 country and our own times, since the introduction of sugar, 

 can have seldom perhaps entertained anything like a just notion, 

 a much lower estimate, at all events, than the Ukraine 

 peasant with his 400 or 500 bee-hives, or a Spanish priest, 

 possessor of 5000. 



About the uses of wax, a word by-and-by ; but with the 

 aroma of honey in our nostrils, and its flavour on our lips, let us 



