USES AND VALUE OP HONEY. 157 



spring." At all events, we read repeatedly of honey as 

 secondary to milk alone amongst the flowing bounties of the 

 Promised Land; and throughout the nations of antiquity, 

 sacred and profane, the busy communities of Bees seem to 

 have held in those of the human race, a degree of importance, 

 which sufficiently attests their value as tax-gatherers on the 

 vegetable kingdom. 



And why were Bees " immortalised " in the verse of Virgil, 

 except on the same principle as that which led man to deify 

 his brother man ? It was wholly for their usefulness, since 

 there is little doubt, that, but for their important economic 

 service, their own wonderful economy would have been as 

 much overlooked, as it was misapprehended. Ants, it is true, 

 with no such claim upon human notice, attracted it scarcely 

 less, witness the ancient " records of their wars ;" but these 

 are comparatively recent, and it is likely that the marvels of 

 Apian monarchies first led to observation of the ways and 

 wonders of the Pismire Kepublics. 



Of the value of honey and its extensive use, we, in our own 

 country and our 'own times, since the introduction of sugar, 

 can have seldom perhaps entertained anything like a just 

 notion, a much lower estimate, at all events, than the 

 Ukraine peasant with his 400 or 500 bee-hives, or a Spanish 

 priest, possessor of 5000. 



About the uses of wax, a word by-and-by ; but with the 

 aroma of honey in our nostrils, and its flavour on our lips, let 



