i6o AUSTRALASIAN BEE MANUAL 



his views on that point; but there has been no difference 

 of opinion about the saccharine matter, as to which 

 Liebig's doctrine will be found given unaltered in the 

 latest colonial work on the subject, Maclvor's 

 " Chemistry of Agriculture," published at Melbourne 

 a few years ago. 



SUPERFLUOUS NECTAR EVAPORATED IF NOT TAKEN BY 

 INSECTS. 



That the nutritive quality of the plants in any growing 

 crop is not diminished by the abstraction of honey from 

 their blossoms w^ould appear to be evident from the 

 fact already referred to, that those plants have actually 

 thrown off the honey from the superfluity of their 

 saccharine juices as a matter which they could no longer 

 assimilate. There would appear, on the other hand, to 

 be good reason to believe that the plants themselves 

 become daily more nutritive during the period of their 

 giving off honey — that is, from the time of flowering to 

 that of ripening their seeds. This is a point upon 

 which, I believe, all agricultural chemists are not quite 

 agreed, but the testimony of Sir H. Davy is very strong 

 in favour of it. In the appendix to his work already 

 quoted, he gives the results of experiments made con- 

 jointly by himself and Mr. Sinclair, the gardener to the 

 Duke of Bedford, upon nearly a hundred different 

 varieties of grasses and clovers. These were grown 

 carefully in small plots of ground as nearly as possible 

 equal in size and quality; equal weights of the dried 

 produce of each, cut at different periods, especially at 

 the time of flowering and at that of ripened seeds, were 

 " acted upon by hot water till all their soluble parts 

 were dissolved; the solution was then evaporated to 

 dryness by a gentle heat in a proper stove, and the 

 matter obtained carefully weighed, and the dry extract, 

 supposed to contain the nutritive matter of the plants, 

 was sent for chemical analysis." Sir H. Davy adds 

 his opinion that his " mode of determining the nutritive 

 power of grasses is sufficiently accurate for all the pur- 

 poses of agricultural investigation." Further on he 



