370 THE HONEY DEW. 



the operation of pressure, and is consequently an adulterated 

 article. 



There are in nature two species of honey, one which is 

 contained in the calyx or nectarium of the flower, and the 

 other, which is an exudation on the leaves of trees. The 

 latter is particularly abundant on the oak, the laurel, and 

 the bramble, and on the first view it appears difficult to be 

 accounted for, how the exudation of a plant, which is in itself 

 of a poisonous and deleterious kind, can be of an innoxious 

 and wholesome nature. The juice of the laurel, obtained by 

 compression or distillation, is a virulent poison, containing 

 perhaps more prussic acid than any other plant ; and it was 

 this circumstance on which many persons have founded 

 their opinion, that the viscous and saccharine matter, which 

 is to be found at particular seasons on the above mentioned 

 trees, could not be an exudation, but must have fallen upon 

 them in the nature of a dew. 



We will however insert the opinions of some very able 

 naturalists on this interesting subject, amongst whom stand 

 conspicuously Mr. Ducarne and Mr. Boissier de Sauvages. 

 The former was an advocate for the fall of the honey dew, 

 denying it altogether to be an exudation, and he expresses 

 himself as follows in one of his letters : — " You know what 

 that honey is, which the bees collect with so much ardour 

 from the flowers, but you do not perhaps know that there are 

 two kinds ; one, which is the real honey, being a juice of 

 the earth, which, proceeding from the plants by transpira- 

 tion, collects at the bottom of the calyx of the flowers, and 

 thickens afterwards; it is, in other words, a digested and 

 refined sap in the tubes of the plants ; the other, which is 

 called the honey dew, is an effect of the air, or a species of 

 gluey dew, which falls, earlier or later, but, in general, a 

 little before and during the dog days. The dew alights on the 

 flowers and the leaves of the plants and trees, but the heat 



