Condensation of Atmospheric Humidity on Solid Surfaces. 91 
it is inferred, that the increase of temperature on the occasions 
referred to, though usually attributed to the influence of the 
cloud, may have quite a different origin, and that the presence 
of a cloud may be merely a contingent circumstance, dependent 
on, and indicative of, a greater degree of moisture in that por- 
tion of air that is for the time incumbent over the place of ob- 
servation. 
( To he continued.) 
Art. XV .—Account of a Case of Poisoning , caused by the 
Honey of the Leclieguana Wasp. By M. Auguste de St 
Hilaire * *. 
-Aristotle, Pliny, and Dioscorides, inform us, that, at a cer- 
tain time of the year, the honey of the countries in the neigh- 
bourhood of Mount Caucasus, rendered those who had eaten of 
it insensible. Xenophon and Diodorus Siculus relate, that, at 
the siege of Trebisond, the soldiers of the army of the Ten 
Thousand ate of the honey which they found in the fields, and 
that afterwards they experienced a delirium of several days, 
some of them resembling drunken people, and others madmen, 
or persons in the agonies of death. Some modern writers have 
confirmed these statements, and have discovered that it is the 
flowers of Azalea pontica , and perhaps also those of Rhododen- 
drum ponticum f, that communicate deleterious properties to the 
honey of Mengrelia. On the authority of the celebrated Tour- 
nefort, Lambert says, that the honey collected upon a certain 
tree of Colchia occasions vomitings. Tournefort himself J 
asserts, that a constant tradition has established, among the in- 
habitants of the coasts of the Black Sea, a belief that the honey 
extracted by the bees from the flowers of Azalea pontica is dan- 
gerous. Lastly, a later traveller, Guldenstaedt, the companion 
a length of time alternately expanding and contracting, at short and irregular in- 
tervals, similar to what may have been observed when a manometer, having a 
great range, is fixed on the outside of a window. 
* Annales die Museum National. 
~Y M. Labillardiere supposes, that the cases of poisoning caused by the honey 
of Asia Minor, might be owing to Menispermum Cocculus . 
X Voyages, ii. p. 228 . 
