THE PASTORAL BEES 25 



John the Baptist, during his sojourn in the wilder- 

 ness, his divinity-school days in the mountains and 

 plains of Judea, fared extremely well. About the 

 other part, the locusts, or, not to put too fine a 

 ^oint on it, the grasshoppers, as much cannot be 

 said, though they were among the creeping and leap- 

 ing things the children of Israel were permitted to 

 eat. They were probably not eaten raw, but roasted 

 in that most primitive of ovens, a hole in the ground 

 i3iade hot by building a fire in it. The locusts and 

 honey may have been served together, as the Bedas 

 of Ceylon are said to season their meat with honey. 

 At any rate, as the locust is often a great plague in 

 Palestine, the prophet in eating them found his 

 account in the general weal, and in the profit of the 

 pastoral bees; the fewer locusts, the more flowers. 

 Owing to its numerous wild-flowers and flowering 

 shrubs, Palestine has always been a famous country 

 for bees. They deposit their honey in hollow trees, 

 as our bees do when they escape from the hive, and 

 in holes in the rocks, as ours do not. In a tropical 

 or semitropical climate, bees are quite apt to take 

 refuge in the rocks ; but where ice and snow prevail, 

 as with us, they are much safer high up in the trunk 

 of a forest tree. 



The best honey is the product of the milder parts 

 of the temperate zone. There are too many rank 

 and poisonous plants in the tropics. Honey from 

 certain districts of Turkey produces headache and 

 vomiting, and that from Brazil is used chiefly as 

 medicine. The honey of Mount Hymettus owes its 



