178 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 



in the county of West Chester in the province of New 

 York, which settled upon the branches of the poison- 

 ash (Rhus Vernix). In the following morning the im- 

 prudent animals were all found dead, and swelled to 

 more than double their usual size a . Whether the honey 

 extracted from the species of the genus Kalmia, Andro- 

 meda, JRhododendrum, &c. be hurtful to the bees them- 

 selves, is not ascertained ^ but, as has been before ob- 

 served, it is often poisonous to man 5 . The Greeks, as 

 you probably recollect, in their celebrated retreat after 

 the death of the younger Cyrus, found a kind of honey 

 at Trebisond on the Euxine coast, which, though it 

 produced no fatal effects upon them, rendered those who 

 ate but little, like men very drunk, and those who ate 

 much, like mad men or dying persons ; and numbers lay 

 upon the ground as if there had been a defeat. Pliny, 

 who mentions this honey, calls it Mcenomenon, and ob- 

 serves that it is said to be collected from a kind of Rho~ 

 dodendrum, of which Tournefort noticed two species 

 there c . 



When the stomach of a bee is filled with nectar, it 

 next, by means of the feathered hairs d with which its 

 body is covered, pilfers from the flowers the fertilizing 

 dust of the anthers, the pollen; which is equally necessary 

 to the society with the honey, and may be named the am- 

 brosia of the hive, since from it the bee-bread is made. 

 Sometimes a bee is so discoloured with this powder as to 

 look like a different insect, becoming white, yellow, or 

 orange, according to the flowers in which it has been 



* Nicholson's Journal, xxiii. 287. b VOL. 1. 1 42. 



Xenoph. Anabas. 1. iv. Plin. Hut. Nat. 1. xxi. c. 13. 

 d Reaura. v. t. xxvi./. 1. 



