Pafturage of Bees. 24 
From the above reafoning we may conclude, 
that every fingle heather bell,* or cup of any 
other flower, is a veffel containing fome of the 
fineft honey, and that nothing in nature is a- 
wanting to make our land flow with it, and 
thereby enable both rich and poor to featt up- 
on it always at their pleafure. 
A conjecture may naturally arife here, that, 
feeing bees do not make honey, but only col- 
lect it, if we could, by any device, fall upon a 
plan to extract it from the flowers; or, in o- 
ther words, to pour 10,000 of Nature’s veflels 
full of honey into one of our artificial ones, it 
would be aftonifhing what a prodigious quan- 
tity might be produced throughout the ifland. 
Scotland 
** juice, and, when fucked up by the infe@t, is changed by the 
“ aétion of its veffels into honey. 
“ In proof of this affertion, take a number of hungry bees, and 
“ give them a full mea/ of fugar, diluted in water, tear one of 
*¢ them afunder immediately after, and its bladder will be found 
“* full of honey ; now, if fugar is fo quickly converted into that 
“ form, have we any reafon to doubt that the juice of the flower 
** will undergo a change equally quick by the fame means ? 
‘“‘ T have often made this experiment, and the refult has been 
“6 uniformly the fame. If the bee has made a meal of white fu- 
** gar, the honey found in its body is white 5 if it has got brown 
* fugar or triacle, the honey will be brown.” 
) 
* Flower of heath. 
