Book I. AGRICULTURE IN POLAND. J<>3 



procured. These are cut over regularly at intervals, and standards left in the usual 

 way. The wild or Scotch pine forests are the most extensive ; these perpetuate them- 

 selves by semination ; and the trees are often so crowded as to be of little use but as 

 fuel. The chief proprietors of these forests are the crown and the religious corporations, 

 who, whenever they can find purchasers, are glad to let them thin out the best trees at a 

 certain rate, and float them, down the nearest stream, to the Vistula, Pregel, or Niemen. 

 A good deal has been said about the importance of felling timber at particular seasons. 

 In Politid, the operation generally takes place in summer, but not, as far as we could 

 learn, from any regard to the effect on the timber. The trees are often notched half 

 through a year or two before, in order to obtain rosin. The other products of forests, 

 as fuel, charcoal, ashes, hoops, poles, &c, are obtained in the usual manner. Game is 

 abundant in them ; and bears, polecats, &c, are to be seen in some places. The woods 

 belonging to the crown consist of upwards of two millions of acres, and are felled in 

 portions annually, so as to cut them every fifty years. 



655. The management of bees is a material article in the forest culture of Poland. 

 The honey is divided into three classes, namely lipiec, leszny, and stepowey prasznymird, 

 thus described by How. (Ge«. Rep. Scot, app.) 



656. Lipiec is gathered by the bees from the lime tree alone, and is considered on the Continent most 

 valuable, not only for the superiority of its flavour, but also for the estimation in which it is held as an 

 arcanum in pulmonary complaints, containing very little wax, and being, consequently, less heating in its 

 nature ; it is as white as milk, and is only to be met with in the lime forests in the neighbourhood of the 

 town of Kowno, in Lithuania. The great demand for this honey occasions it to bear a high price, inso- 

 much, that a small barrel, containing hardly one pound's weight, has been known to sell for two ducats on 

 the spot. This species of the lime. tree is peculiar to the province of Lithuania ; and is quite different 

 from all the rest of the genus Tilia, and is called Kamienna lipsa, or stone lime. The inhabitants have no 

 regular bee-hives about Kowno ; every peasant who is desirous of rearing bees, goes into the forest and 

 district belonging to his master, without even his leave, makes a longitudinal hollow aperture or apertures 

 in the trunk of a tree, or in the collateral branches, about three feet in length, one foot broad, and about 

 a foot deep, where he deposits his bees, leaves them some food, but pays very little further attention to 

 them, until late in the autumn ; when, after cutting out some of their honey, and leaving some for their 

 maintenance, he secures the aperture properly with clay and straw against the frost and inclemency of 

 the approaching season : these tenements (if they may be so called), with their inhabitants and the pro- 

 duce of their labour, are then become his indisputable property; he may sell them, transfer them ; in 

 short, he may do whatever he pleases with them ; and never is it heard that any depredation is com- 

 mitted on them (those of the bear excepted). In Poland, the laws are particularly severe against robbers 

 or destroyers of this property, punishing the offender, when detected, by cutting out the navel and 

 drawing out his intestines round and round the very tree which he has robbed. 



657. When spring arrives, the proprietor goes again to the forest, examines the bees, and ascertains 

 whether there is sufficient food left, till they are able to maintain themselves ; should there not be a 

 sufficient quantity, he deposits with them as much as he judges necessary till the spring blossom appears. 

 If he observes that his stock has not decreased by mortality, he makes more of these apertures in the 

 collateral branches, or in the trunk of the tree, that in case the bees should swarm in his absence, they 

 may have a ready asylum. In the autumn he visits them again, carries the June and July work away 

 with him, which is the lipiec, and leaves only that part for their food which was gathered by them before 

 the commencement and after the decay of the flowering of the lime tree. 



' 658. The leszny, the next class of honey, which is inferior in a great degree to the lipiec, being only for 

 the common mead, is that of the pine forests ; the inhabitants of which make apertures in the pine trees, 

 similar to those near Kowno, and pay the same attention, in regard to the security of the bees, and their 

 maintenance. The wax is also much inferior in quality ; it requires more trouble in the bleaching, and 

 is only made use of in the churches. 



659. The third class of honey is the stcpotrey prasznymird, or the honey from meadows or places where 

 there is an abundance of perennial plants, and hardly any wood. The province of Ukraine produces the 

 very best, and also the very best wax. In that province the peasants pay particular attention to this 

 branch of economy, as it is the only resource they have to enable them to defray the taxes levied by 

 Kussia ; and they consider the produce of bees equal to ready money ; wheat, and other species of corn, 

 being so very fluctuating in price, some years it being of so little value that it is not worth the peasant's 

 trouble to gather it in (this has happened in the Ukraine, four times in twelve years) : but honey and 

 wax having always a great demand all over Europe, and even Turkey, some of the peasants have from 

 four to five hundred ule, or logs of wood in their bee-gardens, which are called pasieha, or beehives ; 

 these logs are about six feet high, commonly of birch wood tthe bees prefer the birch to any other wood), 

 hollowed out in the middle for about rive feet ; several lamina of thin boards are nailed before the 

 aperture, and but a small hole left in the middle of one of them for the entrance of the bees. As the 

 bees are often capricious at the beginning of their work, frequently commencing it at the front rather 

 than the back, the peasants cover the aperture with a number of these thin boards, instead of one entire 

 board, for fear of disturbing them, should they have begun their work at the front. It may appear 

 extraordinary, but it is nevertheless true, that in some favourable seasons, this aperture of five feet in 

 length, and a foot wide, is full before August ; and the peasants are obliged to take the produce long 

 before the usual time, with the view of giving room to the bees to continue their work, so favourable is 

 the harvest some summers. 



660. The process of brewing 7>iead in Poland is very simple : the proportion is three parts of water to 

 one of honey, and 50 lb. of mild hops to 163 gallons, which is called a waar, or a brewing. When the 

 water is boiling, both the honey and hops arc thrown into it, and it is kept stirring until it becomes milk- 

 warm ; it is then put into a large cask, and allowed to ferment for a few days ; it is then drawn off into 

 another cask, wherein there has been aqua-vita?, or whisky, bunged quite close, and afterwards taken to 

 the cellars, which in this country are excellent and cool. This mead becomes good in three years' time ; 

 and, by keeping, it improves, like many sorts of wine. The mead for immediate drink is made from malt, 

 hops, and honey, in the same proportion, and undergoes a similar process. In Hungary, it is usual to put 

 ginger in mead! There are other sorts of mead in Poland, as wisniak, dereniak, maliniak ; they are made 

 of honey, wild cherries, berries of the CY.rnus mascula, and raspberries ; they all undergo the same 

 process, and are most excellent and wholesome after a few years' keeping. The lipiec is made in the same 

 wav, but it contains the honev and pure water onlv. The honey gathered by the bees from the Azalea 

 p .litica, at Oczakow, and in Potesia in Poland, is "of an intoxicating nature ; it produces nausea, and is 

 used only for medical purposes, chiefly in rheumatism, scrophula, and eruption of the skin, in which com- 

 plaints it has been attended with great success. In a disease among the hogs called weugry (a sort ot 

 plague among these animals) a decoction of the leaves and buds of Azalea is given with the greatest 



