372 HONEY. 



udation from the leaves of trees, occasioned often by ill 

 health, though sometimes a kind of perspiration, by "which 

 the plants resist the fervent heats to which they are exposed. 

 Others insist that this sweet substance is discharged from the 

 bodies of those aphides or small lice, which infest the leaves 

 of so many plants. Unquestionably they are produced in 

 both ways. 



Messrs. Kirby and Spence, in their interesting work on 

 Entomology, have given a description of ttie honey-dew fur- 

 nished by the aphides. 



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

 celebrated ; you will always find the former very busy on 

 those trees and plants on which the latter abound ; and if 

 you examine more closely, you will discover that the object 

 of the ants, in thus attending upon the aphides, is to obtain 

 the saccharine fluid secreted by them, which may well be 

 denominated their milk. This fluid, which is scarcely 

 inferior to honey in sweetness, 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. Their sucker being inserted in the 

 tender bark, is without intermission employed in absorbing 

 the sap, which, after it has passed through these organs, 

 they keep continually discharging by these organs. When 

 no ants attend them, by a certain jerk of the body, which 

 takes place at regular intervals, they ejaculate it to a dis- 

 tance." 



"Mr. Knight once observed," says Bevan, "a shower of 

 honey-dew descending in innumerable small globules, near 

 one of his oak-trees, on the 1st of September ; he cut off 

 one of the branches, took it into the house, and holding it in 

 a stream of light, which was purposely admitted through a 

 small opening, distinctly saw the aphides ejecting the fluid 



