29 



CAN BEES HARM THE SOIL OR THE CROPS? 



is, then, the question to be considered. The agriculturist may say, 

 " Granting that the visits of bees may be serviceable to me in the fer- 

 tilisation of my fruit or my clover, how will you prove that I am not 

 obliged to pay too high a price for such services? " For the answer to 

 such a question one must fall back upon the researches of the agricul- 

 tural chemist, which will furnish satisfactory evidence to establish the 

 two following facts : First, that saccharine matter, even when assimi- 

 lated and retained within the body of a plant, is not one of the 

 secretions of vegetable life which can in any way tend to exhaust the soil, 

 being made up of constituents which are furnished everywhere in 

 superabundance by the atmosphere and rain-water, and not containing 

 any of the mineral cr organic substances supplied by the soil qr by the 

 manures used in agriculture; and, secondlj', that in the form in which 

 it is appropriated by bees, either from the nectaries of flowers or as 

 honeydew from the leaves, it no longer constitutes a part of the plant, 

 but is in fact an excrement, thrown oS as superfluous, which if not 

 collected by the bee and by its means made available for the use of man 

 would either be devoured by other insects which do not store honey, or 

 be resolved into its original elements and dissipated in the air. 



The foregoing statements can be supported by reference to authorities 

 ■5^ _iCh can leave no doubt as to their correctness — namely, Sir Humphrey 

 Davy in his "Elements of Agricultural Chemistry," written more than 

 seventy years ago, and Professor Liebig in his " Chemistry in its Applica- 

 tion to Agriculture and Physiology," written some ten years later, and 

 the English version of which is edited by Dr. Lyon -Playf air and 

 Professor Gregory. These works, which may be said to form the founda- 

 tion of a rational system of agriculture, were written with that object 

 alone in view, and the passages about to be quoted were not intended to 

 support any theory in favour of bee-culture or otherwise; they deal 

 simply with scientific truths which the layman can safeh' follow and 

 accept as true upon such undeniable authority, altnough he may be 

 incapable himself of following up the processes which have led to their 

 discovery or which prove their correctness. 



SACCHARINE MATTER OF PLANTS NOT DERIVED FROM THE 



SOIL. 

 Liebig, when describing the chemical processes connected with the 

 nutrition of plants, informs us (at page 4*) that — 



There are two great classes into which all vegetable products may be 

 arranged. The first of these contain nitrogen; in the last this element 



* The edition to which reference is made is the fourth, pubUshed 1847. 



