HONEY. 403 
the sunlight. A minute quantity of an animal acid lends 
additional curative value of an antiseptic nature to honey. Pure 
Honey contains of glucose about twenty parts in one hundred, 
but being deficient in lime, and in iron, it cannot be considered 
a perfect food; nevertheless, mothers would certainly be wise 
to make a free use of it in the nursery, and it should appear 
more constantly on the general breakfast table. Essentially it 
is a solution of dextrose, and levulose, with volatile oils, and 
occasionally some cane sugar. Virgin honey is that which 
flows spontaneously from the comb when the cells are uncapped 
from the hive. Wild honey is the product of bees in their wild 
state, or when not kept by man. King Solomon said in his 
wisdom, “hast thou found it? Eat no more than is sufficient, 
lest thou surfeit ; for it is not good to eat much honey ” (Proverbs 
xxv. 16). : 
It was Aristceus, a pupil of Chiron, who first gathered Honey 
from the comb; and this was the basis of the seasoning of 
Apicius ; whilst Pythagoras, who lived to be ninety, took latterly 
only breadand honey. Tacitus tells that our German progenitors 
gave credit for their long lives, and their great strength, to the 
mead, or Honey-beer, on which they regaled themselves. 
“* Whoever wishes,” said an old, and classic maxim, “ to preserve 
his health should eat every morning before breakfast young 
onions with honey.” 
“There was an old man of Kilkenny 
Who never had more than a penny: 
He spent all that money in onions and honey, 
That knowing old man of Kilkenny.” 
Seeing that good honey contains heat-forming sugar, which is so 
very quickly assimilated and taken up into the blood, some com- 
bination therewith of other food less easily absorbed is generally 
desirable ; otherwise the digestion may be upset by too speedy 
a surfeit of bodily caloric, and energy. Thus the bread and 
honey of time-honoured memory is a sound form of support, 
as likewise the traditional milk and honey of the Old Testament 
Canaan. Such a food may be prepared by taking a bowl of 
new milk, and breaking into it some light wheaten bread, together 
with some fresh white honeycomb. The mixture will be found 
both pleasant, and light of digestion. As a heat producer by 
way of food, one pound of honey is equal to two pounds of butter; 
and it may sometimes be beneficially substituted for cod-liver 
