86 BEES. 



of wild natural bread added. The manna of itself is 

 both food and medicine, and the pungent vegetable 

 extracts have rare virtues. Honey promotes the ex- 

 cretions and dissolves the glutinous and starchy im- 

 pedimenta of the system. 



Hence it is not without reason that with the ancients 

 a land flowing with milk and honey should mean & 

 land abounding in all good things ; and the queen 

 in the nursery rhyme, who lingered in the kitchen to 

 eat " bread and honey ' while the " king was in the 

 parlor counting out his money," was doing a very sen- 

 sible thing. Epaminondas is said to have rarely eaten 

 anything but bread and honey. The Emperor Augus- 

 tus one day inquired of a centenarian how he had kept 

 his vigor of mind and body so long ; to which the 

 veteran replied that it was by " oil without and honey 

 within." ' Cicero, in his " Old Age," classes honey 

 with meat and milk and cheese as among the staple 

 articles with which a well-kept farm-house will be 

 supplied. 



Italy and Greece, in fact all the Mediterranean 

 countries, appear to have been famous lands for honey. 

 Mount Hymettus, Mount Hybla, and Mount Ida pro- 

 duced what may be called the classic honey of an«= 

 tiquity, an article doubtless in nowise superior to ou£ 

 best products. Leigh Hunt's " Jar of Honey " is 

 mainly distilled from Sicilian history and literature, 

 Theocritus furnishing the best yield. Sicily has al- 

 ways been rich in bees. Swinburne (the traveler of a 

 hundred years ago) says the woods on this island 

 abounded in wild honey, and that the people also had 

 many hives near their houses. The idyls of Theoc- 

 ritus are native to the island in this respect, and 

 abound in bees — » " flat-nosed bees " as he calls them 



