50 
THE SENSES OF BEES. 
Asia Minor which give to the honey not only dis- 
agreeable, but poisonous qualities. He tells us that 
the soldiers, having eaten a quantity of honey in the 
environs of Trebizonde, were seized with vertigo, 
vomitings. &c. This effect was attributed to the 
rose-laurel, (Rhododendron Ponticum,) and yellow 
azalea, (Azalea Pontica.) Father Lamberti, also, 
assures us that a shrub of Mingrelia produces a kind 
of honey which causes very deleterious effects. It 
is quite possible that the poisonous juices extracted 
from these plants might he innoxious to the Bees 
themselves, and thus the correctness of their taste 
might he so far vindicated. Sir J. E. Smith asserts, 
that “ the nectar of plants is not poisonous to Bees 
and an instance is given in the American Philosophical 
Transactions, of a party of young men, who, induced 
by the prospect of gain, having removed their hives 
from Pennsylvania to the Jerseys, where there are 
vast savannahs, finely painted with the flowers of the 
Kalmia angustifolia, could not use or dispose of their 
honey on account of its intoxicating quality; yet 
“ the Bees increased prodigiously an increase only 
to be explained, says Dr. Bevan in his Honey-Bee, 
by their being well and harmlessly fed. Nor is this 
defence of the taste of Bees successfully controverted 
by the following occurrence stated in Nicholson’s 
Journal.* “ A large swarm of Bees having settled,” 
observe that they had merely alighted upon it, to 
rest perhaps after a long flight, “ on a branch of the 
poison-ash, (Rhus Vernix, L.) in the county of West 
* Page 287. 
