TASTE IN INSECTS. 35 



from the flowers of the dwarf laurel, which abounds 

 in the American woods*. 



"It may seem," says Mouffet, "to be not so much 

 to Dame Nature's honour, that she should bring forth 

 a thing so desired of all men, as honey is, and so 

 ordinarily to temper it with poyson. Nay, but in so 

 doing she did not amiss, so to permit it to be ; that 

 she might thereby make men more cautious and lesse 

 greedy, and to excite them not only to use that which 

 should be wholesome, but to seek out for antidotes 

 against the unwholesomeness of it : and for that 

 cause she hath hedged the rose about with prickles, 

 given bees a sting, hath infected the sage with toad- 

 spittle, and mixed poyson (and that very deadly too) 

 with honey, sugar, and manna.'* 



The remarks of Dr. Evans, upon the probability 

 of our British honey being poisoned, are worthy of 

 attention. " As most of the plants,'* he says, " enu- 

 merated as producing poisonous honey, are now in- 

 troduced into our gardens, and the thorn apple 

 (Datura stramonium) has long become perfectly 

 naturalized, they might be supposed to injure the 

 British honey. Most probably, however, their pro- 

 portion to the, whole flowers in bloom is too small to 

 produce any such inconvenience ; whereas, on their 

 native continent, they exclusively cover whole tracts 

 of country, as in the Jerseys t-" 



That vegetable poisons are sometimes fatal to bees 

 themselves, however, appears from the following no- 

 tice: A large swarm of bees having settled on a 

 branch of the poison ash (Rhus vernix), in the county 

 of West Chester, in America, was taken into a hive 

 of fir, at three o'clock in the afternoon, and removed 

 to the place where it was to remain, at nine. About 

 five the next morning the bees were found dead, 



* Bevan on Bees, p. 68. 

 f The Bees, a Poem, ii, 95, Note* 



