2 AUSTRALASIAN 
would goon be discovered by men engaged in the grazing fe 
flocks and herds in a very thinly populated land. It a oe ) 
therefore, surprising that in the Scriptures of the Old , 7 
ment, the earliest written records of the human race, be n 
frequent reference made to honey as a thing universally "ee 
and intimately connected with the comforts of man. Lhe 
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 1s used 
generally in the ancient Scriptures in combination with that of 
milk, the most universal of all foods, to form the Oriental 
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 dricd-u 
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 extraordin 
ni omware by Virgil that bees were generated in the decaying entieeee 
ulloc. 
