ORDER VI.—VEIN-WINGED INSECTS. 287 
10¢h. Tue Uses or Wax anp Honey.—lIt need hardly 
be mentioned that both these are extensive articles of com- 
merce, and as such are the means by which large sums of 
+r 
money are made every year. We are informed on good 
authority that Great Britain, where this branch of rural 
economy is quite neglected, annually imports more than 
four hundred thousand dollars’ worth of beeswax. This 
article is extensively used in the manufacture of candles for _ 
lighting churches and palaces, as well as more humble dwell- 
ings; it is also used for polishing floors and tables. In 
anatomical museums it is used for the representation of 
every part of the body, and of almost every surgical disease 
or deformity; and to so great an extent has this useful art 
been carried in France and Germany, that medical students 
are spared the necessity of much disagreeable labor among 
the dead bodies, and many disgusting and dangerous inves- 
tigations. The figures of distinguished persons are also 
modeled in wax, and painted to represent the life; so also 
are faces for doll-babies, and all kinds of fruit and flowers, 
natural as if growing on their native stock, made out of this 
substance which the little busy bee has manufactured for 
man. 
Honey is a not less important article of commerce. Be- 
fore the process of manufacturing sugar was known, it was 
generally used as a sweetening substance, and it is still ex- 
tensively used for this purpose, as well as an ingredient of 
many medicinal compounds. ‘The ancients pounded bees to 
a jelly, and used it as a beverage in maladies of the stomach 
and bowels, particularly in dysentery; they believed it re- 
moved freckles from the face, and, incorporated with nut- 
oil, restored lost hair. Honey was at one time thought to 
be a universal panacea: it dissipated melancholy, anger, 
corrupted blood; it cured inveterate coughs, pain in the 
side, and gout; it assuaged the troubles of the mind, re- 
stored the health impaired by age, etc., etc. 
