S2 THE LIMfi. 



pure aud elegant tastes, the lime always appeals powerfully, and 

 perhaps it would be no error of judgment to deem preference for it 

 One of the instincts of an amiable and tender disposition, such as 

 admires the grand and stately, but still best loves the little and the 

 pretty. When the bees have access to large numbers of limes, so that 

 the storage in their waxen cities has been derived principally from this 

 source, the flavour and quality of the honey are particularly good, and 

 quite as marked as when these creatures feed extensively upon the 

 heather, or upon the aromatic plants of the Labiate kind, to which 

 latter is owing the peculiar and exquisite flavour of the honey of 

 Narbonne. In some parts of Lithuania there are forests composed 

 almost exclusively of lime-trees. The bees gather their harvest with 

 rapidity, and the combs being almost immediately removed from the 

 hives, the flavour is preserved pure, and the inhabitants realise large 

 sums by the sale of what the insects have so assiduously collected. 



The whole subject of the production of honey by flowers is very 

 pleasing. There are few probably by which a less or greater quantity 

 is not yielded, since the presence of this substance appears to serve as 

 an attraction to many little creatures of tender wing, who, rifling the 

 blossom, and rambling about in it, help to convey the pollen from the 

 stamens to the pistil, and thus unconsciously help forward the great 

 function 'of reproduction. How beautiful are these various steps in 

 the exquisitely- adjusted economies of nature ! The earth, while shone 

 on to-day by the self-same stars which delighted the eyes of the first 

 members of mankind, is enriched also with the descendants of the 

 identical trees and flowers which excited their curiosity and delighted 

 their affections ; and descendants of the now existing individuals will no 

 doubt carry on for ever, in one unbroken stream, the loveliness that every 

 summer renews. How is this effected ? Solely and absolutely through 

 the instrumentality of the' apparatus we call the " flower." The flower, 

 in turn, needs that its parts shall be lightly touched, as when the 

 musician runs his hand over the harp-strings ; they who touch so 

 tenderly are the unconsidered little visitors and dwellers whose presence 

 is often thought an intrusion ; and they, it would appear, are invited 

 and sustained by the nectar that lies in the inmost heart of the flower. 

 Usually the honey is not placed in any special receptacle, but lies in the 

 base of the blossom, round about the feet of the stamens and pistil, 

 just as we see green mosses forming a pretty encircling bank round the 

 base of the trunk of an old tree in the wood. There are plenty of 

 examples, however, of such special cups or vases for it, and these are 



