100 UTILIZATION OF ANIMAL PEODtlCTS. 



Section III. — Honey, Wax, and Manna. 



Honey and wax can, for the forester, be only natural products ; 

 but, thanks to the teeming numbers and extensive distribution of 

 our wild honey-making bees, they are obtainable in very large 

 quantities, especially where rocky scarps and large trees abound. 

 The combs are often as much as 6 feet long and 3^ feet broad. 

 The usual mode of collecting the honey is to smoke off the bees, 

 the men covering themselves with blankets and carrying a torch 

 at the end of a pole. This practice injures the honey ; but there 

 are some tribes which possess the secret of anointing their bodies 

 with some substance, so that not a single bee will touch them. 

 The honey is obtained by expression. The remains of the comb 

 are then put into boiling water, the wax soon floating on the top, 

 where it hardens on the water being cooled. In this state the wax 

 is known as yellow or virgin wax. The best honey in India is 

 made by a species of Trigona, which is a small stingless bee build- 

 ing its comb inside hollow trees. 



Manna or honey-dew is the sweet substance excreted chiefly by 

 some Aphidse. In certain, especially dry, years, these insects 

 breed in enormous numbers, so that every tree of the species on 

 which they live becomes infested with hundreds of thousands of 

 them. The total amount of sweet substance excreted is then so 

 large, that the leaves and twigs become covered with a thick 

 syrup, much of which also falls upon the ground. The species 

 frequented by such insects are principally gregarious conifers and 

 only a few broad-leaved species, such as Elceodendron glaucum 

 and sdl. 



Honey-dew is eagerly gathered, for home consumption, by the 

 inhabitants of the Himalayas. The encrustation is washed off the 

 leaves and twigs in hot water, which dissolves it at once. The 

 syrup is then strained and boiled down to the consistence of honey, 

 for which it may be easily mistaken by its appearance. A con- 

 siderable proportion of the honey-dew crystallises at ordinary tem- 

 peratures. 



Section IV. — Hides, horns, bones, and ivoky. 



Every year thousands of cattle die inside our forests, the car- 

 casses remaining unappropriated by the Hindu owners. Unless 

 arrangements are made to secure the hides without delay, carrion- 

 eating birds and quadrupeds soon destroy them and valuable raw 

 material is thus lost. Excluding Burma, the inland trade dur- 

 ing 1888-89 in raw hides amounted to 7.5 lakhs of ru[)ees and in 



