330 DIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 



where its saccharine substitute is much dearer than with 

 us, few articles of rural economy, not of primary import- 

 ance, would be dispensed with more reluctantly. In the 

 Ukraine some of the peasants have 4 or 500 bee-hives, 

 and make more profit of their bees than of corn ^ ; and 

 in Spain the number of bee-hives is said to be incredible ; 

 a single parish priest was known to possess 5000''. 



The domesticated or hive-bee, to which we are in- 

 debted for this article, is the same according to Latreille 

 in every part of Europe, except in some districts of Italy, 

 where a different species {Apis ligustica of Spinola) is kept 

 — the same probably that is cultivated in the Morea and 

 the isles of the Archipelago '^. Honey is obtained, how- 

 ever, from many other species both wild and domestic. 

 What is called rock honey in some parts of America, 

 which is as clear as water and very thin, is the produce 

 of wild bees, which suspend their clusters of thirty or forty 

 waxen cells, resembling a bunch of grapes, to a rock ^ : 

 and in South America large quantities are collected from 

 the nests built in trees by Trigona AmaWiea, and other 

 species of this genus recently separated from Apis ^ ; 

 under which probably should be included the Bamhuros, 

 whose honey, honest Robert Knox informs us, whole 

 towns in Ceylon go into the woods to gather '^. Accord- 

 ing to Azara, one of the chief articles of food of the In- 

 dians who live in the woods of Paraguay is wild honey s« 



* Communications to the Board of Agricull. vii. 286. 

 " Mills on Bees, 77- 



" Latr. in Humboldt and Bonpland, Recueil cfObserv. de Zoologie, 

 &c. (Paris, 1805) 300, -' Hill in Swammerdam, i. 181, note. 



" Latr. ubi stipi: 300. ^ Knox's Ccijlon, 25. 



' Voij. dans V Amcr. Mcrid. i. Ki-i. 



