higah EY ‘GaN se YB oe se 247 
that they {warme under the earth. The honey is fharp 
and black, yet in fomeé places there is better, and the combes 
better fafhioned, asin the province of Yucuman in Chille, 
and in Carthagene™.”” 
The buccaneer Lionel Wafer mentions bees among the 
productions of the Ifthmus of Darien; but the informati- 
on which he has given us will not decide the queftion,. 
which Iam examining. He fuppofes, that fome of the 
bees of this country are deftitute of ftings, becaufe he faw 
the Indians put their naked arms into the nefts, without 
being tung}. Wafer was in Darien in the year 1679. 
The next argument employed by Dr. Belknap is ex- 
tremely feeble. He finds, in Purchas, that when Ferdi- 
nand de Soto came with his army to Chiaha, which was 
in July 1540, he found among the provifions of the na- 
tive Indians of that place, “a fpot full of honie of beest.”’ 
As there were no Europeans fettled om the continent of 
America at this time except in Mexico and in Peru, the 
doGor feems to think this folitary- pot of honey favours 
his opinion, for immediately after he fays ‘* it is evident”’ 
that honey-bees (meaning the true honey-bees) were found. 
as far to the northward as Florida, before the arrival of 
the Europeans in the iflands and on the continent of Ame- 
rica. 
Let us.examine this argument. If the exiftence of the 
true honey-hee in Floridaas early asthe year 1540, was 
fupported by nothing more than the pot of hoaey found 
at the village of Chiaha, I think, the ground of argument is 
very feeble indeed: for it no more follows that this honey 
was the fabric of the apzs mellifica than that the tributary 
honey of the Mexicans was the prodution of that animal. 
But 
* ‘The Naturall and Morall Hiftorie of the Eaft and Weft Indies, &c. p, 303 and 304. En 
* glifh tranflation. London 1604, 4. 
+ Defcription of the Ifthmus of America, London 1704. 8vo, 
$ Purchas. Vol. v. p. 1539. 
