67 
_ ‘These pucerons extract this liquid, or that which is 
the material of it, through the bark of certain trees, without 
_ injuring them, or causing any deformity, as another species 
do, which crisp the leaves, or of that kind whose puncture 
produces hollow protuberances in the elm and pine. They 
remain immoveable, many months of the year, occupied at 
their labours, that is, extracting the sap on which théy sub- 
sist. 
These insects, instinctively informed of the kind of 
branches most convenient for them, disdain those which are 
tender, or recent, although much easier to pierce, and attach ~ 
themselves to branches of a year old, in which they pierce 
a dart, which serves them, at the same time, as trunk and 
sucker.* 
It is in their stomach, abdomen, or posterior passage, that 
this juice, at first rough and unpleasant, under the bark, as- 
-sumes a Sweet savour, quite equal, to judge of it by the 
taste, to that of the vegetable honey-dew, as well that which 
transpires from the leaves, as that which is secreted in the 
nectarine cups of flowers; and if the latter has any thing 
more, it is the mixture of essential oil of flowers, which 
gives to honey its different flavours.t 3 
These pucerons are the only animals, which I know, that 
really fabricate honey. Their viscera are the true laboratory 
of it. This mixture of materials, or a large portion of it, 
is only the excess, or residuum of their nourishment, which 
they discharge, as we have said, in the ordinary way. The 
bees, to whom it is our wish to pay due honour, bave no 
part or lot in the matter, except in the address, or ingenu- 
ity, which they display, in amassing the different kinds of 
honey-dew. They place it, as is well known, in enérepot, in 
a kind of pouch, which they have near their mouth, to empty 
it into their cells, as into a magazine, without making the 
least sensible change or alteration in it. 
I have proved this oftentimes, by catching bees on their 
return from foraging, and pressing their corslet between my 
fingers. I have even seized by the throat some of those large 
* It is to the shoot alone of the preceding year that they attach, and 
not to the older or younger shoots. a 
t Iplanted at Sauvages, says M. Boissier, near an apiary, a hedge 
of rosemary. Since that time, the honey of the hives, which before 
had no peculiar odour, was perfumed with this plant, the flowers of 
which supplied the bees a long time. 
