THE BEE. 



bee-hives at certain seasons of the year from Achaia into Attica, 

 and a similar custom still prevails in Italy, and even in this 

 country in the neighbourhood of heaths. 



Among the domesticated species of bees may be also mentioned 

 the Apis unicolor in Madagascar, the Apis Indica at Pondicherry 

 and in Bengal, and the Apis Adansonii at Senegal. 



Fabricius affirmed that the Apis Acraensis laboriosa, and 

 others in the East and West Indies, might be domesticated with 

 greater advantage than even the common hive-bee of Europe, 

 called the Apis mellifica. 



205. Honey is one of the class of aliments which requires to be 

 used with some precaution, since not only are certain constitutions 

 of body affected injuriously by it, even in its most natural and 

 wholesome state, but it happens occasionally that the insects which 

 collect it resort to poisonous flowers, which impart their noxious 

 properties to the honey extracted from them. 



Kirby mentions the case of a lady of his acquaintance upon 

 whom ordinary honey acted like poison, and says, that he heard 

 of instances in which death ensued from eating it. 



But where the bee unfortunately resorts to poisonous plants, 

 the consequences are not thus limited to individuals of peculiar 

 idiosyncrasies. Dr. Barton has given a remarkable example of 

 this.* 



In the autumn and winter of the year 1790, an extensive 

 mortality was produced amongst those who had partaken of the 

 honey, collected in the neighbourhood of Philadelphia. The 

 attention of the American government was excited by the general 

 distress ; a minute enquiry into the cause of the mortality ensued, 

 and it was satisfactorily ascertained that the honey had been 

 chiefly extracted from the flowers of Kalmia latifolia. Though the 

 honey mentioned in Xenophon's well-known account of the effect 

 of a particular sort, eaten by the Grecian soldiers during the cele- 

 brated retreat, after the death of the younger Cyrus, did not 

 operate fatally, it gave those of the soldiers who ate it in small 

 quantities the appearance of being intoxicated, and such as par- 

 took of it freely, of being mad or about to die, numbers lying on 

 the ground as if after a defeat. A specimen of this honey, which 

 still retains its deleterious properties, was sent to the Zoological 

 Society in 1834 from Trebizond, on the Black Sea, by Keith 

 E. Abbott, Esq. 



206. The maladies of the bee proceed from three causes, hun- 

 ger, damp, and infection ; all of which admit of prevention when 

 the insect is maintained artificially. 



* American Philosophical Transactions, vol. v. of the year 1790. 

 108 



