HONEY. 371 



Price of many a crime untold : 

 Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold! 

 Good or bad a thousand-fold I 



How widely its agencies vary — 

 To save — to ruin — to curse — to bless — 

 As even its minted coins express, 

 Now slamp'd with the image of Good Queen Bess, 



And now of a Bloody Mary !" — Hood. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 



Honey — Pasturage — Overstocking. 



That honey is not a natural secretion of the hee, but a 

 substance obtained from the nectaries of blossoms, appears 

 to have been well known to the ancient Jews. As the bee 

 was classed among the unclean creatures, the eating of 

 which was forbidden, one of their Rabbis asks : " Since we 

 are not permitted to eat bees, why are we allowed to eat 

 honey .?" and replies : " Because the bees do not make 

 (or secrete) honey, but only gather it from plants and flow- 

 ers." The truth is well expressed in the lines so familiar to 

 most of us from our childhood, 



" How doth the little busy bee 

 Improve each shining hour, 

 And gather honey all the day 

 From every opening flower." 



Bees gather honey not only from the blossoms, but often in 

 large quantities, from what have been called honey-dews ; 

 " a term applied to those sweet, clammy drops that glitter on 

 the foliage of many trees in hot weather." Two different 

 opinions have been zealously advocated as to the origin of 

 honey-dews. By some they are considered the natural ex- 



