88 The Honey-Makers 



It was also used in many other ways, some of which 

 Moffett explains : — 



" The rich, sick, or great men, desire their candles to be 

 made of it, by reason of the sweet smell. Also the use of 

 wax is not small in stopping the chinks in vessels, for tents 

 in the camp to keep out rain, for bed-ticks that the 

 feathers fly not out, to joyn pipes made of reeds, as Ovid 

 sang concerning the shepherds of old. 



" And with the Reed well waxed they play'd and sang. 



"■ Also the most excellent Painters painted with wax, as 

 Pliny reports, and they adorned ships with it. This kinde 

 of painting, though it were not hurt by salt, nor by sun, 

 nor by the winde, yet it was lost we know not how, when 

 Apelles, Protogenes, and Zeuxis died. Also the Ancients 

 were wont to smear over their writing-tables with wax 

 before that paper was invented, as Juvenal describes it." 



Butler informs us that an oil of marvellous virtue in 

 curing disease was distilled from wax. 



Sealing-wax for letters and documents was also made of 

 beeswax, which was of different colors in different coun- 

 tries, and Moffett informs us that the bees of America 

 gathered black wax. Either the Americans at that time 

 were very careless in preparing their wax, or else the 

 " American " wax came from Mexico or South America, 

 where the tropical bees build a very dark-colored comb. 



Shakespeare alludes to the use of wax in sealing docu- 

 ments in " Henry VI." where the rebels under Jack Cade 

 meet on Blackheath, and one says, " The first thing we do, 

 let 's kill all the lawyers." 



To which Cade replies, — 



"Nay, that I mean to do. Is not this a lamentable 

 thing, that of the skin of an innocent lamb should be 

 made parchment? that parchment being scribbled o'er. 

 should undo a man? Some say the bee stings : but I say 



