194 The Honey-Makers 



Sometimes honey from poisonous flowers proves injuri- 

 ous to the young bees, and sometimes bees gather honey 

 from other sources than flowers — if opportunity affords — 

 as all know who have watched the primitive sap-boiling in 

 Florida, where the cane is crushed in a wooden mill in 

 the open air, and where the barrel into which the sap runs 

 contains not only cane juice but a crust of honey bees that 

 having come to gorge remain to die, drowned in the too 

 abundant sweet. 



Nor do bees disdain the allurements of the cider-mill, 

 though cider when stored in honey-comb is said to prove 

 fatal to the young. And one grieves to learn that bees 

 may, upon occasion, become sad inebriates. 



" It has been a gross libel upon animals to say that a 

 man has made a beast of himself, when he has drunk to 

 such excess as to lose his reason ; but we might without 

 injustice say that he has made a bumble-bee of himself, for 

 those htde debauchees are particularly proue to intoxication. 

 Round the nectaries of hollyhocks, you may generally 

 observe a set of determined topers, quaffing as pertina- 

 ciously as if they belonged to Wilkes's club ; and round 

 about the flower (to follow up the simile) several of the 

 bon vivants will be found lying on the ground inebriated and 

 insensible." Thus quotes Bevan, and immediately adds, 

 " I have frequently seen the ground beneath one of my 

 pear-trees strewed over with hive-bees and wasps, in a simi- 

 lar state, after they had banqueted upon the rich juices of 

 the fallen fruit." 



Sometimes plants yield nectar from other organs than the 

 glands of flowers, some of the vetches, for instance, having 

 dark spots on their leaves from which a sweet liquid exudes, 

 and other plants having nectar-yielding glands on leaves or 

 stems. 



The source of honey was as puzzling to the ancients as 



