TASTE IN INSECTS. 31 



As the goat relishes the taste of the poisonous 

 %vater-hemlock, so our soft-billed birds will also feed 

 on poisonous berries. We have not lieard of any- 

 bad consequences to those .who eat goat's flesh, 

 nor to the Italian amateurs of beca-ficos, though the 

 latter have been partly fattened on the deleterious 

 berries of the laurel or the night-shade ; but in Ame- 

 rica, birds eaten after they have fed on the fruit of 

 the kalmia are reported to have produced fatal con- 

 sequences.* The flowers of the latter plant also, 

 and several others ranked as virulent poisons, are 

 frequently robbed of their honey by bees, whose taste 

 does not seem to intimate the existence of any dele- 

 terious quality, no more than does the taste of people 

 who afterwards partake of such honey to their cost. 

 It is not mentioned, indeed, that this honey, so fatal 

 to man, is at all injurious to the bees by which it 

 is collected ; though Dr Darwin tells us, that the 

 bees are well aware of the sorts of honey v>'hich 

 would injure themselves, and will not therefore touch 



it.t 



^ Perhaps, ' says the elder Huber, ^ the sense of 

 taste is the least perfect of those enjoyed by bees ; 

 for, contrary to the received opinion, they display 

 little choice in collecting honey ; nor do they testify 

 greater nicety in the quality of their water, for the 

 most corrupted marshes and ditches seem to be pre- 

 ferred to the most limpid streams, nay, even to dew 

 itself Nothing, therefore, is more unequal than 

 the quality of honey, the produce of one district dif- 

 fering from another, and the honey of spring being 

 unlike that of autumn ; while even the contents of 

 one hive do not always resemble those of the one 

 which is contiguous. But though bees are thus not 



* See Dr Schumaeher's Cases in Anderson's Joum. iii, 456, 

 t Temple of Nature. 



