Honey 191 



honey coming from there is usually tested ; it is highly 

 prized for medical preparations." 



The rhododendrons and the laurels, that make the 

 northern woods and the southern mountains of North 

 America so gorgeous in the spring and summer, are still 

 as poisonous as are members of the same family in Asia 

 Minor; though the bees here do not, as a rule, work 

 upon these questionable sweets. That upon occasion they 

 may do so however the following goes to prove : — 



" Dr. Barton, in the American Philosophical Transac- 

 tions, says that in the autumn and winter of 1 790, the 

 honey collected near Philadelphia proved fatal to many, 

 in consequence of which a minute inquiry was instituted 

 under the direction of the American Government, and it 

 was ascertained satisfactorily that the fatal honey had been 

 chiefly extracted from the flowers of the Kalmia latifolia. 

 Still more recently, two persons at New York are said to 

 have lost their lives by eating wild honey, which was sup- 

 posed to have been gathered from the flowers of the dwarf 

 laurel, a thriving shrub in the American woods." 



The same authority speaks of death having ensued from 

 eating the common American pheasant which had fed on 

 the leaves of the Kalmia latifolia, showing the extremely 

 pernicious quality of this beautiful shrub. 



Again we are told : — 



"A party of young men, induced by the prospect of 

 gain, having removed their hives from Pennsylvania to the 

 Jerseys, whose vast savannas were finely painted with the 

 flowers of the Kalmia angustifolia, could not use or dispose 

 of their honey, on account of its intoxicating quality ; yet 

 ' the bees increased prodigiously,' an increase only to be 

 explained by their being well and harmlessly fed." 



Some plants, however, are poisonous to the bees them- 

 selves as the following curious story illustrates : — 



