190 The Honey- Makers 



in Pontus are accused of being this " goat's death/' the 

 source of the poisonous honey. 



Pliny speaks too of maddening honey : — 



" In the country of the Sanni, in the same part of Pontus, 

 there is another kind of honey, which causes madness and 

 is called ' msenomenon.' It is attributed to the flowers of the 

 rhododendron with which the woods there abound. Al- 

 though the people pay a tribute to the Romans in wax they 

 derive no profits whatever from the honey in consequence 

 of these dangerous properties. 



" In Persis, too, and in Ssetulia, a district of Mauritania 

 Caesariensis, bordering on the country of the Massaesyli, there 

 are poison honeycombs found ; and some too only partly 

 so, one of the most insidious things that possibly could 

 happen were it not that the livid color of the honey gives 

 timely notice of its noxious qualities. What can we suppose 

 to have possibly been the intention of Nature in thus lay- 

 ing these traps in our way, giving us honey that is poison- 

 ous in some years and good in others, poisonous in some 

 parts of the combs and not in others, and that, too, the 

 produce in all cases of the self-same bees? 



" It was not enough, forsooth, to have produced a sub- 

 stance in which poison might be administered without the 

 slightest difficulty, but must she herself administer it as well 

 in ihe honey, to fall in the way of so many animated be- 

 ings? What in fact can have been her modve except to 

 render mankind a little more cautious and somewhat less 

 greedy ? " 



Pliny also describes a honey, to be coveted by the house- 

 wives of to-day, though it possessed but the one good 

 quality. 



" Upon Mount Carraa in the Island of Crete, which is 

 nine miles in circuit, there is not a fly to be found and 

 honey made there no fly will touch. By this circumsUnce 



