34 THE PASTORAL BEES. 



custs, the more flowers. Owing to its numerous wild 

 flowers and flowering shrubs, Palestine has always 

 been a famous country for bees. They deposit their 

 honey in hollow trees as our bees do when they es- 

 cape from the hive, and in holes in the rocks as ours 

 do not. In a tropical or semi-tropical climate bees 

 are quite apt to take refuge in the rocks, but where 

 ice and snow prevail, as with us, they are much safer 

 high up in the trunk of a forest tree. 



The best honey is the product of the milder parts 

 of the temperate zone. There are too many rank 

 and poisonous plants in the tropics. Honey from cer- 

 tain districts of Turkey produces headache and vomit- 

 ing and that from Brazil is used chiefly as medicine. 

 The honey of Mount Hymettus owes its fine quality 

 to wild thyme. The best honey in Persia and in 

 Florida is collected from the orange blossom. The 

 celebrated honey of Narbonne in the south of France 

 is obtained from a species of rosemary. In Scotland 

 good honey is made from the blossoming heather. 



California honey is white and delicate and highly 

 perfumed, and now takes the lead in the market. 

 But honey is honey the world over ; and the bee is 

 the bee still. " Men may degenerate," says an old 

 traveler, " may forget the arts by which they acquired 

 renown ; manufacturies may fail, and commodities be 

 debased, but the sweets of the wild-flowers of the 

 wilderness, the industry and natural mechanics of the 

 bee, will continue without change or derogation." 



