370 [Assembly 



Huber says that the bee holds the lamiua of wax with its claws 

 vertically — the tongue rolled up serving for a support — and by 

 elevating or depressing it at will, causes the whole of its cir- 

 cumference to be exposed to the action of the mandible, so that 

 the margin is soon gnawed into pieces, which drop, as they are 

 detached, into the double cavity, bordered with hairs of the man- 

 dibles. The^e fragments, pressed by others nearly separated, fall 

 OB one side of the mouth, and issue from it in the form of a very 

 Barrow riband. They are then presented to the tongue, which 

 impre-gnates them with a frothy liquor. During this operation, 

 the tongue assumes all sorts of forms : sometimes it is flattened 

 like a spatula ; then like a trowel, which applies itself to the ri- 

 band of wax ; at other times it resembles a pencil terminating in 

 a point. After having moistened the whole of the riband, the 

 tongue pushes it so as to make it re-enter the mandibles, but in 

 an opposite directionj where it is worked up anew. The liquor, 

 Mixed with the wax, communicates to it a whiteness and opacity 

 which it had not before, and doubtless gives it that tenacity which 

 it possesses in its perfect state. Bees have large and complex 

 organs of sight, and always take the shortest road to their object. 

 The bee does not take honey indiscriminately from every flower. 

 In the meadows they are chiefly seen upon the orchidese, poly- 

 gonia,caryophylacea, but seldom, if ever, upon the raniinculacea;, 

 perhaps on account of some poisonous matter in the latter. The 

 oleander, which yields poisonous honey fatal to thousands of 

 flies, is carefully avoided by bees; and the crown imperial, the 

 white nectaries of which are so conspicuous, tempts, but in vain, 

 the passing bee. 



The finest flavored and most delicate honey is collected from 

 aromatic plants. Those flowers which have a nectar not hurtful 

 to bees, but poisonous to man, are sometimes visited by bees. 

 The description by Xenophon of the intoxicating or maddening 

 honey which so violently affected a number of the ten thousand 

 Greek soldiers in his celebrated retreat, has been confirmed by 

 Tournefort and by Dr. Barton, who, in his account of the poison- 

 ed honey collected from the Kalmia latifolia (so called from the 

 traveller Kalm, who remarked it in North America. It is a beau- 



