28 FLORA OF AUSTRALIA.. 



POISONOUS HONEY. 



[The following paper was intended as a reply to an article by Dr. 

 Sell, who supposed that a boy at Borrogorang had been poisoned by 

 eating a quantity of honey.'] 



T HAVE read with much interest the elaborate paper on 

 " Poisonous Honey," which Dr. Bell very modestly entitles 

 " A few words about honey," and although I am disposed to con- 

 cur in many of the statements contained in that communication, 

 yet I am scarcely prepared to believe that we have sufficient 

 evidence before us to prove the existence of poisonous honey in 

 Australia. The. solitary case to which the doctor refers may 

 perhaps have arisen from the fact of the boy having eaten " a 

 considerable quantity" of honey ; or probably it may have arisen 

 from some idiosyncrasy in his constitution, as it is stated on high 

 authority that some persons cannot eat honey, or even drink 

 mead without experiencing serious, nay, sometimes fatal effects. 

 Kirby and Spence particularly mention the case of a lady, upon 

 whom honey acted " like poison," and they affirm that some 

 persons of particular habits and constitution have died from the 

 effects of it. Until, therefore, there has been a chemical analysis 

 of the honey in question, and it has been clearly shown that it 

 possesses deleterious properties, I shall be inclined to think that 

 either the boy must have over-eaten himself, and thus brought on 

 gastric fever, or that there is something in his constitution which 

 predisposes him to attacks of this kind. At the same time, how- 

 ever, the subject is one of a very important character, and should 

 any further cases arise from eating the honey of his neighbour, 

 hood, it will be most interesting to ascertain " the nature of the 

 shrubs or plants from which the honey was produced." As far 

 as I am able to discover, we have not in Australia any indigen- 

 ous plants which are calculated to produce effects similar to 

 those described by Dr. Bell. The genera Azalea, Kalmia, Rho- 

 dodendron, and Andromeda, which, it is supposed, give the poison- 

 ous quality to honey in the neighbourhood of Trebizond on the 



