158 SHAKESPEARE'S [ Honey. 
Honey will suffer no dead bodies to putrefy. 
Honey boiled cureth the wounds inflicted by the sting 
or teeth of serpents, and helpeth those who have eaten 
venomous mushrooms. Good it is also for to kill lice and 
such like vermin in the head, and to rid away nits. 
Holland’s Pliny, bk. xxii. ch. xxiv. 
Honey is engendered naturally in the air, and especially 
by the influence and rising of some stars. Be it what it 
will, either a certain sweat of the sky, or some unctuous 
jelly proceeding from the stars, or rather a liquor purged 
from the air when it purifieth itself; would God we had 
it so pure, so clear, and so natural, and in the own kind 
refined, as when it descendeth first, whether it be from sky, 
from star or from the air. Ibid., bk. xi. ch. xii. 
SOMETIME among honey deep in the hive, breedeth 
certain small worms, as it were attercops [spiders], and do 
spin and weave and make webs, and have the mastery of 
all the hive, and therefore the Honey rotteth and is 
corrupt. Honey that long abideth in old wax, waxeth 
red, and the corruption of Honey is like to the corruption 
of wine in flaskets [7.e., bottles; Bartholomew has in 
viribus—in strength], and shall therefore be taken in time. 
Also bees do sit on the hive and suck the superfluity that 
is in the Honey-combs ; and if they did not so the Honey 
should be corrupt that is in the combs, and spiders should 
be gendered. They sit on. the combs, and do keep busily 
that those spiders have no mastery, and eat them if they 
find them, and should else all die. 
Bartholomew (Berthelet), bk. xix. § 55. 
Our Honey is reputed and taken to be the best, because 
it is harder, better wrought and cleanlier vesselled up, than 
that which cometh from beyond the sea, where they stamp 
and strain their combs, bees and young blowings altogether 
into the stuff. Also it breedeth (being gotten in harvest- 
time) less choler. Our hives are made commonly of rye- 
straw, and wattled about with bramble quarters; but some 
make the same of wicker, and cast them over with clay. 
We cherish none in trees, but set our hives somewhere on 
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