DIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 331 



Captain Green observes that, in the island of Bourbon, 

 where he was stationed for some time, there is a bee 

 which produces a kind of honey much esteemed there. 

 It is quite of a green colour, of the consistency of oil, 

 and to the usual sweetness of honey superadds a certain 

 fragrance. It is called green honey, and is exported to 

 India, where it bears a high price ^. One of the species 

 that has probably been attended to ages before our hive- 

 bee, is Apis fasciata of Latreille, a kind so extensively 

 cultivated in Egypt, that Niebuhr states he fell in upon 

 the Nile, between Cairo and Damietta, with a convoy of 

 4000 hives, which were transporting from a region where 

 the season for flowers had passed, to one where the spring- 

 was later''. Columella says that the Greeks in like 

 manner sent their bee-hives every year from Achaia into 

 Attica ; and a similar custom is not unknown in Italy, and 

 even in this country in the neighbourhood of heaths. In 

 Madagascar, according to Latreille, the inhabitants have 

 domesticated Apis imicolor ,- A. indica is cultivated in 

 India at Pondicherry and in Bengal ; A. Ada?iso?iii, Latr. 

 at Senegal'^ ; and Fabricius thinks that^. acraensis (Ce?i- 

 tris, Syst. Piez.) lahoriosa, and others in the East and 

 West Indies, might be domesticated with greater advan- 

 tage than even A. mellifica ^. 



* M. Latreille appears to have described this bee under the name 

 of Apis unicolor. Mem. sur Ics Abcilles, 8. 31). 



" Latr. Hid. Kat. xiv. 20. 



■^ Latr. in lliniiboldt and Bonpland, Rccucil, &c. 302. 



'' Vorlesungen, 324, I have read somewhere, but neglecting 

 to make a memorandum I cannot refer to the author, (Latreille ?) 

 that a species of wasp in South America collects and stores up 

 honey. 



