APIS MELLIFTCA. 217 



a species of Rhododendron.* Dr. Barton, an American physician, 

 observed a poisonous kind of honey in the western parts of Pen- 

 sylvania, near the river Ohio. The usual symptoms produced by- 

 honey of this description are dimness of sight, vertigo, ebriety, pain 

 in the stomach and intestines, low pulse, profuse perspiration, 

 foaming at the mouth, vomiting, diarrhoea, cold extremities, con- 

 vulsions, and in a few instances death. In these cases gentle 

 emetics, and purgatives of castor oil, together with the use of warm 

 fomentations were found to be the most efficacious remedies. The 

 plants from the flowers of which the bees are capable of extracting 

 a poisonous honey, are principally the Kalmia angustifolia and 

 latifolia, of Lin. ; the Kalmia hirsuta, of Walter ; the Andromeda 

 maricma ; the Rhododendron maximumf or large Rose-bay ; the 

 Azalea nudijlora; and the Datura Stramoninum .% 



The domesticated or Hive-bee, is the same, according to Latreille, 

 in every part of Europe, except in some districts in Italy, and 

 probably also in the Morea, and the Isles of the Archipelago,where a 

 different species (Apis Ugustica, of Spinola) is commonly cultivat- 

 ed^ Honey is obtained, however, in Asia and America, from many 

 other species both wild and domestic || In South America, quanti- 

 ties are collected from the nests built in trees, by Trigona Amal- 

 thea, and other species of this genus recently separated from Apis. 

 The Apis fasciata, of Latreille, which is extensively cultivated in 

 Egypt, is supposed to have been attended to for ages before our 

 Hive-Bee. In Madagascar the inhabitants have domesticated Apis 

 unicolor ; Apis Indica is cultivated in India, at Pondicherry, and 

 in Bengal ; A. Adansonii, at Senegal ; and according to Fabricius, 

 the A. acraensis, laboriosa, and others in the East and West Indies, 



* Xenoph. Anabus. 1. iv. Plin. Hist. Nat. I, xxi. c. 13. 



f Geo. II. Welchius, a learned German writer, quoted by Baron Haller, (Hist. 

 Stirp. Indig-t Helv. i. p. 433,) says that the flesh of a hare which was fed with the 

 leaves of the Rhododendron ferrugineum proved fatal to the guests. 



J See Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, vol. v. p. 51. 



§ See an interesting account of a Mexican wild bee, (Melapona lieecheii,) with a 

 description of the insect and its hive, in Capt. Becchy's Voyage to the Pacific, part 

 2, p. 613, by E.T. Bennet, Esq. F. L. S. 



|] Latreille, in Humboldt and Bonpland, Recueil (VObserv. de Zoologie, Sic. 

 p. 300. 



