GEOGRAPHY OF THE GENERA. 87 



induced to surmise that these had possibly been the 

 flowers the bees had extracted the honey from which 

 had been so baneful to the troops of Xenophon. 



But it seems that bees themselves cannot collect with 

 impunity the honey of noxious flowers, for they are oc- 

 casionally subject to a disease resembling vertigo, from 

 which they do not recover, and which is attributed to 

 the poisonous nature of the flowers they have been re- 

 cently visiting. 



Several different kinds of honey and wax have been 

 described, but some degree of uncertainty exists as to 

 whether they are aU the produce of genuine species of the 

 genus Apis ; for it will be found, in a rapid notice I pur- 

 pose giving of the more conspicuous genera of foreign 

 bees, that there are two exotic genera of this section of 

 the family, both social in their habits, and which both pro- 

 duce the same materials ; there is a wasp also that makes 

 honey. But of all the many kinds of honey noticed, the 

 green kind furnished to Western India by the island of 

 Reunion, the produce of an Apis indigenous to Madagas- 

 car, but which has been naturalized in the French island, 

 and also in the JNIauritius, is perhaps the most remarkable. 

 It is of a thick syrupy consistency, and has a peculiar 

 aroma. It is much esteemed upon the most proximate 

 coasts of the peninsula of India, where it bears a high 

 price. Whether its greenness of colour is derived from 

 the flowers which this species frequents, or whether it be 

 incidental to the nature of the bee, has not been ascer- 

 tained, but the honey of the South American wasp, the 

 sole species producing the material, has also a green tinge. 



Nature has assigned the task of thus catering for 

 man, by collecting and garnering from the recondite 

 crypts within the blossoms of flowers, to about sixteen 



