402 



TWENTIETH CHAPTER. 



ON THE NATURE OF PROPOLIS. 



THE HYPOTHESIS OF HUBER RELATIVE TO THE NATURE AND ORIGIN OF 

 PROPOLIS NOT FOUNDED ON TRUTH — SUPPOSED TO BE GATHERED FROM 

 CERTAIN PLANTS — THE CELLS OF THE BEES LINED AND SOLDERED WITH 

 PROPOLIS — ARGUMENTS AGAINST THAT HYPOTHESIS — EXPERIMENTS TO 

 DETERMINE THE AFFINITY OF WAX AND PROPOLIS — PROPOLIS A VEGE- 

 TABLE SUBSTANCE — WAX AN ANIMAL SUBSTANCE — EXPERIMENT TO 

 DETERMINE THE NATURE OF PROPOLIS — NOT CARRIED INTO THE HIVE 

 AS A SEPARATE SUBSTANCE — THE EFFECT OF TEMPERATURE UPON IT — 

 POSITION OF THE BEES CONSTRUCTING A COMB — THE FOUNDATION OF 

 A COMB DETERMINED TO BE WAX — EXPERIMENT TO DETERMINE THE 

 EXISTENCE OF TWO SEPARATE SUBSTANCES — CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS. 



It is the opinion of Mr. Rennie, that Huber has, by the 

 depth of his researches, set at rest the important question 

 touching the nature and origin of propolis: in opposition, 

 however, to that opinion of Mr. Rennie, we venture to 

 affirm, that the hypothesis advanced by Huber relative to 

 that substance has no foundation whatever in truth. It is 

 primarily worthy of observation, that the existence of pro- 

 polis in a hive as a separate substance is now entirely ex- 

 ploded by the French apiarians, by whom it is called cire 

 forte, or cire brune. It is, in fact, wax itself in all its con- 

 stituent principles, and only differing in appearance and 

 colour from the wax of the combs, on account of the ap- 

 parently coarse and rude manner in which it is worked by 

 the bees, divesting it of that comparatively transparent pro- 

 perty which appertains to the more attenuated wax with 

 which the combs are constructed. From the deepened 

 colour and opacity of propolis, the superficial observer is 

 very apt to be misled, and be induced to draw the conclu- 

 sion, that a positively natural difference exists between pro- 



