ORDER VI. VEIN- WINGED INSECTS. 287 



THE USES OF WAX AND HONEY. It need hardly 

 be mentioned that both these are extensive articles of com- 

 merce, and as such are .the means by which large sums of 

 money are made every year. "VVe are informed on good 

 authority that Great Britain, where this branch of rural 

 economy is quite neglected, annually imports more than 

 four hundred thousand dollars' worth of beeswax. This 

 article is extensively used in the manufacture of candles for 

 lighting churches and palaces, as well as more humble dwell- 

 ings; it is also used for polishing floors and tables. In 

 anatomical museums it is used for the representation of 

 every part of the body, and of almost every surgical disease 

 or deformity; and to so great an extent has this useful art 

 been carried in France and Germany, that medical students 

 are spared the necessity of much disagreeable labor among 

 the dead bodies, and many disgusting and dangerous inves- 

 tigations. The figures of distinguished persons are also 

 modeled in wax, and painted to represent the life ; so also 

 are faces for doll-babies, and all kinds of fruit and flowers, 

 natural as if growing on their native stock, made out of this 

 substance which the little busy bee has manufactured for 

 man. 



Honey is a not less important article of commerce. Be- 

 fore the process of manufacturing sugar was known, it was 

 generally used as a sweetening substance, and it is still ex- 

 tensively used for this purpose, as well as an ingredient of 

 many medicinal compounds. The ancients pounded bees to 

 a jelly, and used it as a beverage in maladies of the stomach 

 and bowels, particularly in dysentery ; they believed it re- 

 moved freckles from the face, and, incorporated with nut- 

 oil, restored lost hair. Honey was at one time thought to 

 be a universal panacea: it dissipated melancholy, anger, 

 corrupted blood ; it cured inveterate coughs, pain in the 

 side, and gout ; it assuaged the troubles of the mind, re- 

 stored the health impaired by age, etc., etc. 



