BRITISH AND FOREIGN HONEY WAX. 265 



The VIRTUES of honey, and the various uses of 

 wax, the staple articles of our subject, are too uni- 

 versally known to need recapitulation. It is probable, 

 however, that honey is better adapted to occasional 

 and medicinal, than general dietetic use ; and also 

 that in some constitutions, it has the effect ascribed 

 to it by the ancient naturalists, of exciting melan- 

 choly. Some twenty odd years since, during the 

 early attempts to abolish the slave trade, it was pro- 

 posed to substitute the use of honey for that of 

 sugar, which was but too truly stigmatized as the 

 blood and sweat of human beings : the abolition of 

 sugar, and of slavery, however, had then equal 

 success. 



British honey is more solid, more apt to granulate 

 and crystallize, and generally more pure and free 

 from adulteration, than the fine Southern and Me- 

 diterranean species. The superiority of the latter, 

 which is liquid, consists in its fine fragrant flavour, 

 often scented with wild thyme and odoriferous herbs. 

 The present retail price of the Minorca, or best fo- 

 reign honey, in London, is two shillings and sixpence 

 per Ib. of the English, equally good perhaps in es- 

 sentials, two shillings. Dr. Reece tells me, that in his 

 late experiment of distilling honey, comparatively 

 with sugar, a pound of honey yielded considerably 

 more alcohol, or spirit, than a pound of sugar. 



Of WAX, the consumption is, necesssarily, far 

 more extensive than of honey; and of the former 

 this country has always stood in need of a consider- 

 able import, a circumstance not be regretted, since 

 there must be some commercial reciprocity, or how 



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