TASTE IN INSECTS. 207 



caterpillars of the ' ' Vapourer," we have found regaling indis- 

 criminately upon willow, pear, oak, and hawthorn. 



The accuracy of taste conferred upon the Bee has sometimes 

 been called in question, on the ground that this indefatigable 

 gatherer is by no means particular as to the source from whence 

 she collects her honied stores, giving, in that process, more 

 heed, as it would seem, to quantity than quality of material. Yet 

 herein, we may be sure, Mistress Bee knows what she is about, 

 just as well as her insect fellows. She is most likely quite as 

 discriminate as they, in culling for her own appetite and that 

 of her infant charges ; and both, it is probable, would come but 

 poorly off were her collections confined to those particular 

 flowers or districts, which, in our opinion, supply honey of the 

 finest flavour, though not, of necessity, that most grateful to 

 the palate of a Bee. Our poet in writing of this Insect, 



" Whose sense so subtly true 

 From pois'nous herbs extracts the healing dew," 



may seem, indeed, at variance with certain matter of fact 

 relaters, ancient and modern, (among them, Xenophon and 

 Tournefort,) who tell us of poisonous honey collected from the 

 blossoms of the rhododendron, rose-laurel., and yellow azalia, 

 in Asia minor, and also in Philadelphia, from the flowers of 

 Kalmia latifolia. 



The honeys drawn from the above and other deleterious 

 plants, are related to have produced most serious disorders, 

 even to fatality, both in man and beast ; but supposing such 



