HONEY. 285 



CHAPTER XVI. 



HoiraY. 



That honty is a vegetable product, was known to the 

 ancient Jews, one of whose Rabbins asks : " Since we may 

 not eat bees, which are unclean, why are we allowed to 

 eat honey ?" and repUes : ""Because bees do not make 

 honey, but only gather it fi'om plants and flowers." 



Bees often obtain a saccharine substance from the 

 honey-dews, which are found on the fohage of many 

 trees, and are sometimes merely an exudation from then- 

 leaves, though oftener a discharge from the bodies of 

 small aphides or " plant-Uce."* 



Messrs. Kirby and Spence, in their interesting work on 

 Entomology, have given a description of the honey-dew' 

 furnished by the aphides : 



" The loves of the ants and the aphides have long been cele- 

 brated ; you will always find the former very busy on those trees 

 and plants on which the latter abound; and, if you examine 

 somewhat more closely, you will discover that the object of the 

 ants, in thus attending upon the aphides, is to obtain the saccha- 

 rine fluid gfecreted by them, which may well be denominated their 

 milk. This fluid, which is scarcely inferior to honey in sweet- 

 ness, issues in limpid drops from the abdomen of these insects, not 

 only by the ordinary passage, but also by two setiform tubes, 

 placed one on each side, just above it. Thsir sucker being inserted 

 in the tender bark, is, without intermission, employed in absorb- 



* The Abbe Boiasier de Sawcages, in " 1672, described very- fully and accurately 

 these two species of honey-dew. The first kind, he says, has the same origin with 

 the marma on the .ash and maple trees of Calabria and Briancon, where it flows 

 plentifnlly from their leaves and trunks, and thickens in the form in which it is 

 usually seen. ' I have received specimens of a honey-dew from California, which ia 

 Bftid to fall from the oa^ trees in stalactites of considerable size. 



