50 'THE SENSES OF BEES. 



Asia Minor which give to the honey not only dis- 

 agreeable, hut poisonous qualities. He tells us that 

 the soldiers,, having eaten a quantity of honey in the 

 environs 6f Trebizonde, were seized with vertigo, 

 vomitings, &c. This effect was attributed to the 

 rose-laurel, (Rhododendron Ponticum,) and yellow 

 azalea, (Azalea Pontica.) Father Lamherti, also, 

 assures us that a shrub of Mingrelia produces a kind 

 of honey which causes very deleterious effects. It 

 is quite possible that the poisonous juices extracted 

 from these plants might be innoxious to the Bees 

 themselves, and thus the correctness of their taste 

 might be so far vindicated. Sir J. E. Smith asserts, 

 that ee the nectar of plants is not poisonous to Bees ;" 

 and an instance is given in the American Philosophical 

 Transactions, of a party of young men, who, induced 

 by the prospect of gain, having removed their hives 

 from Pennsylvania to the Jerseys, where there are 

 vast savannahs, finely painted with the flowers of the 

 Kalmia angustifolia^ could not use or dispose of their 

 honey on account of its intoxicating quality; yet 

 ' the Bees increased prodigiously ;" an increase only 

 to be explained, says Dr. Bevan in his Honey- Bee, 

 by their being well and harmlessly fed. Nor is this 

 defence of the taste of Bees successfully controverted 

 oy the following occurrence stated in Nicholson's 

 T ournaL* <c A large swarm of Bees having settled," 

 observe that they had merely alighted upon it, tc 

 lest perhaps after a long flight, " on a branch of the 

 Boison-ash, (Rims Vernix, L.) in the county of West 

 * Page 287. 



