HONEY. 405 
exposed to the sun, (after adding chopped raisins, lemon-peel, 
and other condiments), a famous fermented drink called mead, 
or (when the finer honey is used) metheglin, combining certain 
herbs so as to confer special flavours. In The Closet Opened, of 
Sir Kenelm Digby, knt. (1645), is given a recipe for the metheglin 
of Sir Thomas Gower, then Marshal of Berwick. ‘ Five gallons 
of Honey to be poured into forty of small ale, and while still 
warm to be stirred exceedingly well with a clean arm till they 
be perfectly incorporated.” Likewise the old Teutons prepared 
a Honey wine, and made it a practice that this should be drunk 
for the first thirty days after marriage by a newly wedded 
pair, from which custom has been derived the familiar honey- 
moon, or the month after the wedding. Sometimes hops and 
yeast were also employed for making mead. In the present 
day, cottage beekeepers about Hampshire, and elsewhere, com- 
pound a homely sort of mead from odd pieces of comb, with refuse 
honey, and from the brood left therein after having taken their 
bees in the autumn. This ferments of itself by reason of the 
pollen in the combs; and the Honey beer, or Hum, as the 
cottagers call it, has been found to contain a valuable curative 
principle derived from the poison of bee stings, and proving of 
specific use against dropsical effusions, erysipelas, and nettlerash, 
also for certain forms of sore throat. Cases can be reliably 
adduced of a lasting cure thereby to cardiac dropsy, which was 
extreme, likewise of hydrocephalic effusion in children, and of 
dropsy from suppressed action of the kidneys. The sting of a bee 
or wasp will sometimes inflict a shock on the heart, even fatal 
in its results, by rapid absorption of the poison. The stinging 
secretion ejected from the poison gland of bees is chiefly formic 
acid (which is known to exercise considerable antiseptic effects). 
This is found to be present in well-preserved honey, but not in 
freshly gathered nectar: evidently it has been added by the 
bees to help preserve the honey. The said sting-poison contains 
three principles, one convulsive, one stupefying, and one which 
excites inflammation ; thus the extraordinary fact appears that 
the poison embodies two ingredients, one of which is opposed 
to the other. When a person is stung within the throat by a bee 
or a wasp, the best thing to do is to chew an onion, keeping the 
pulp at the back of the mouth, and swallowing it slowly ; thereby 
Swelling of the throat becomes prevented. Calverley describes 
in humorous lines the “ bottling of wasps,” by a gardener :— 
