278 DIRECT BENEFITS DEEIVED PROM INSECTS. 



whose honey, honest Kobert Knox informs us, whole towns 

 in Ceylon go into the woods to gather.^ According to Azara, 

 one of the chief articles of food of the Indians who live in the 

 woods of Paraguay is wild honey.^ Captain Green observes 

 that, in the island of Bourbon, where he Avas stationed for 

 some time, there is a bee which produces a kind of honey 

 much esteemed there. It is quite of a green colour, of the 

 consistency of oil, and to the usual sweetness of honey super- 

 adds a certain fragrance. It is called green honey, and is 

 exported to India, where it bears a high price.^ One of the 

 species that has probably been attended to ages before our 

 hive-bee, is Apis fasciata of Latreille, a kind so extensively 

 cultivated in Egypt, that Niebuhr states he fell in upon the 

 Nile, between Cairo and Damietta, with a convoy of 4000 

 hives, which were transporting from a region where the season 

 for flowers had passed, to one where the spring was later. 

 Columella says that the Grreeks in like manner sent their 

 bee-hives every year from Achaia into Attica ; and a similar 

 custom is not unknown in Italy, and even in this country in 

 the neighbourhood of heaths. In Madagascar, according to 

 Latreille, the inhabitants have domesticated Apis unicolor; 

 A. indica is cultivated in India at Pondicherry and in Bengal ; 

 A. Adansonii Latr. at Senegal ^ ; and Fabricius thinks that 

 A. acraensis {Centris Syst. Piez.) laboriosa, and others in the 

 East and West Indies, might be domesticated with greater 

 advantage than even A. mellifica.^ 



Here also must be mentioned the manna used as an agree- 

 able food in the East, which, though not directly produced by 

 insects, is caused to flow from the Tamarix mannifera by the 

 punctures of a small species of Coccus.'^ 



The last, and doubtless the most valuable, product of 

 insects to which I have to advert is Silk. To estimate justly 

 the importance of this article, it is not sufficient to view it as 

 an appendage of luxury unrivalled for richness, lustre, and 

 beauty, and without which courts would lose half their 



1 Knox's Ceylon, 25. 2 Voy dans. VAmer. Merid. i. 1 62. 



3 M. Latreille appears to have described this bee under the name of Apis 

 unicolor. Mem. sur les Abeilles, 8. 39. 



4 Latr. Hist. Nat. xiv. 20, 



5 Latr. in Humboldt and Bonpland, Recueil, Sec. 302. 



6 Vbrlesungen, 324. 7 Burmeistev, Manual of Ent. 561. 



