7 o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ARTIFICIAL HONEY AND MANUFACTURED SCIENCE. 



Br ALLEN PRINGLE, 



PRESIDENT OF THE ONTARIO BEE-KEEPEBS' ASSOCIATION. 



TTTE are often told that this is a scientific age, and the state- 

 VV ment is undoubtedly true. The world now more than ever 

 before looks to science as a secular if not a spiritual guide. How- 

 ever much their speculations may be questioned and controverted, 

 the scientific book and the scientific man are popularly accepted 

 as authority, at least on matters of physical and historical fact. 

 The veracity of science therefore is, or ought to be, above suspi- 

 cion. How careful, then, ought the teacher and exponent of sci- 

 ence to be that his assertions are true ; that his alleged facts are 

 facts ; and that even his speculations are free from the appearance 

 of dogmatism ! He needs to be especially particular when writing 

 for the general public, for people untrained in science will accept 

 his statements as expert testimony. Errors will thus be sure to 

 mislead his readers, many of whom are without the knowledge 

 that would enable them to discriminate between the true and the 

 false in his assertions. 



In The Popular Science Monthly for June, 1881, appeared an 

 article on Glucose and Grape-Sugar, by Prof. H. W. Wiley. In 

 that article the following unfortunate statement was made : " In 

 commercial honey, which is entirely free from bee mediation, 

 the comb is made of paraffin, and filled with pure glucose by 

 appropriate machinery/' To say that there was not one word of 

 truth in that extraordinary assertion is the short and proper way 

 to put it, and that is exactly what I undertake to say. There was 

 not a tittle of evidence that any such honey had ever been made 

 up to that time, nor is there a particle of evidence that any such 

 honey has since been made. 



Nevertheless, this vile slander on an honest and honorable in- 

 dustry has done incalculable injury to bee-culture in America, if 

 not throughout the world. A lie is said to travel half round the 

 world while the truth is getting ready to start, and this one 

 proved no exception. Though contradicted and refuted over and 

 over again, it still lives and is still going. Newspapers still keep 

 iterating and reiterating Prof. Wiley's slander, but they seldom 

 publish a correction. Thousands of people, common and uncom- 

 mon, still believe that scientific yarn that comb-honey is manu- 

 factured throughout without " bee mediation," and why shouldn't 

 they ? The former believe it because the newspapers say so, and 

 the latter because the magazines and encyclopaedias say so ; for it 

 is a fact that this itinerant fiction has actually found a place in 



