46 THE HONEY-BEE. 



In this condition great numbers lay upon the ground, 

 as if there had been a defeat. None of them died, 

 and in about twenty-four hours they recovered con- 

 sciousness. On the third or fourth day after the 

 seizure they got up, but were like men who had 

 taken powerful physic. 



Tournefort, when travelling in Asia Minor, recol- 

 lecting these historical circumstances, made careful 

 investigations as to the probabilities of the case. 

 Two kinds of shrubs were pointed out to him as 

 bearing flowers, the honey from which was delete- 

 rious, and the very odour of which is still said to pro- 

 duce headache. These plants were the rhododendron 

 Ponticum, and azalea Pontica, nearly allied species, 

 growing abundantly in that part of the world. 

 Father Lamberti corroborates Xenophon's descrip- 

 tion, by stating that similar effects have been 

 produced by the honey of Colchis, where these 

 shrubs are common. 



We learn from an account published by Dr. Barton 

 in the American Philosophical Transactions, that, in 

 the autumn of 1790, several fatal cases occurred near 

 Philadelphia, from eating honey collected in the 

 neighbourhood. An official investigation into the 

 circumstances led to the conviction that the source of 

 the mischief lay in the flowers of the kalmia latifolia 

 Still more recently, some persons in New York lost 

 their lives from, as it was supposed, eating honey 

 derived from the flowers of a species of dwarf laurel, 

 common in the vicinity. A further instance of the 

 influence of the kalmia tribe of flowers is given in the 

 fact that honey drawn chiefly from the species latifolia, 

 in New Jersey, is unsaleable, from its intoxicating 



