HONEY. 285 



CHAPTER XVI. 



HONEY. 



THAT hon&y is a vegetable product, was known to the 

 ancient Jews, one of whose Rabbins asks : " Since we may 

 not eat bees, which are unclean, why are we allowed to 

 eat honey ?" and replies : " Because bees do not make 

 honey, but only gather it from plants and flowers." 



Bees often obtain a saccharine substance from the 

 honey-dews, which are found on the foliage of many 

 trees, and are sometimes merely an exudation from their 

 leaves, though oftener a discharge from the bodies of 

 small aphides or " plant-lice."* 



Messrs. Kirby and Spence, in their interesting work on 

 Entomology, have given a description of the honey-dew 

 furnished by the aphides : 



" The loves of the ants and the aphides have long been cele- 

 brated; you will always find the former very busy on those trees 

 and plants on which the latter abound; and, if you examine 

 somewhat more closely, you will discover that the object of the 

 ants, in thus attending upon the aphides, is to obtain the saccha- 

 rine fluid secreted by them, which may well be denominated their 

 milk. This fluid, which is scarcely inferior to honey in sweet- 

 ness, issues in limpid drops from the abdomen of these insects, not 

 only by the ordinary passage, but also by two setiform tubes, 

 placed one on each side, just above it. Their sucker being inserted 

 in the tender bark, is. without intermission, employed in absorb- 



* The Abbe Boissier de Salvages, in " 1672, described very fully and accurately 

 these two species of honey-dew. The first kind, he says, has the same origin with 

 the manna on the ash and maple trees of Calabria and Briancon, where it flows 

 plentifully from their leaves and trunks, and thickens in the form in which it ia 

 usually seen. ' I have received specimens of a honey-dew from California, which ia 

 said to fall from the oak trees in stalactites of considerable size. 



