'2. AUSTRALASIAN 



would soon be discovered by men engaged in the grazing of 

 flocks and herds in a very thinly populated land. It is not, 

 therefore, surprising that in the Scriptures of the Old Testa- 

 ment, the earliest written records of the human race, we find 

 frequent reference made to honey as a thing universally known 

 and intimately connected with the comforts of man. The 

 name is said to be ghoneg in the original Hebrew, signifying 

 " delight," evidently the root of the German word " honig," 

 which easily becomes " honey" in English. The name is used 

 generally in the ancient Scriptures in combination with that of 

 milk, the most universal of all foods, to form the Oiiental 

 metaphor denoting abundance — " a land flowing with milk and 

 honey " being the words used in nearly twenty passages of 

 those writers, from Moses down to the prophet Ezekiel, to 

 describe the country promised to the descendants of Jacob. 

 In the non-historical parts of Scripture, the Prophecies, the 

 Psalms of David, the Song of Solomon, Proverbs, and the book 

 of Sirach, the words "honey" and "honey-comb" are always 

 used as the types of everything good and wholesome as well 

 as sweet ; in the last mentioned book (which, though its 

 canonical value is a matter of dispute, may be safely quoted in 

 this respect) it is distinctly mentioned as one of the necessaries 

 of life. In the historical portions it is first mentioned as 

 one of the choice articles sent as a present by Jacob to the 

 ruler of the Egyptians when his sons went to that people to 

 obtain a supply of corn during a time of scarcity, about 3600 

 years ago. Some 700 years later King Jeroboam sent a " cruse 

 of honey " with other presents to propitiate the prophet 

 Ahijah. A curious case is mentioned about Samson (in the 

 twelfth century before our Christian era) finding " a swarm of 

 bees and honey in the carcass of the lion " which he had killed 

 some time before. In explanation of this strange sort of bee- 

 hive, we are told that in the climate of Palestine, in some hot 

 seasons, dead bodies are often so quickly dried up that they 

 become like mummies and remain a long time undecayed, so 

 that a swarm of bees might well select the inside of a dried-up 

 lion's body (supposing it to have been disembowelled) to build 

 in.* Somewhat later in date a circumstance is related of 



•Possibly some such case may have given rise to the extraordinary theory 

 lull °k7 V"* 11 Hurt bees were generated in the decaying entrails of a 



