256 INQUIRY CONCERNING 
words in theirdanguage for honey or wax*. For, as I have 
already obferved, thefe Indians and the Mohegans fpake 
dialeG&is of the fame language. It as not probable, theres’ 
fore, that one of the tribes would have thefe words and 
the other not, when we confider that ever fince our acquain- 
tance with them they have lived at no great diftance from 
each other. And we have known them for more than one 
hundred and fifty vears. 
Thefe are the principal negative evidences which I am. 
able to adduce in fupport of my opinion, that the honey- 
bee is pot an indigenous animal in the northern coun- 
tries of the new-world. Icall them megative evidences, 
becaufe to moft perfons, I prefume, they will not appear 
to be more. In my opinion, however, fome of them run 
clofely into the evidences of the poffitzve kind. - 
The pofitive evidences and circumftances. which fup- 
port my opinion, arenumerous. 1 fhall confine myfelf to 
the chiefeft of them. : 
Mr. John Joffelyn, who was in New-England, for the 
firfttime, in the year 1638, and afterwards in 1663, and 
who wrote an account of his voyages, together with fome 
very imperfect fketches of natural hiftory in 1673, {peaks 
of the honey-bee in the following words: ‘* The honey- 
wees are carried over by the Englifh, and thrive there ex- 
ceedingly}.” : 
Dr. Belknap fays, ‘ there is a tradition in New-En- 
gland, that the perfon who firft brought a hive of bees 
into the country was rewarded with a grant of land; but 
the perfon’s name, or the place where the land lay, or by 
whom the grant was made, I have not been able to learn{.” 
Perhaps, 
* See page 252 and 253. 
$¢ See his Voyage to New-England, p. 120. 
} See the Differtation, p. 123. 
