ON HONEY, ITS FORMATION AND CHANGES. 
143 
For several years past tlie author has paid attention to the natural history 
and chemistry of honey, and has already published a few observations. As 
little is known on the subject, a continuance and confirmation of them will 
perhaps be thought worth recording. 
On turning over the works on honey, you will find that not only do the au¬ 
thors contradict each other, but even sometimes themselves. Fownes, Turner, 
Gregory, and others state 44 that the solid part of honey is grape sugar,” but 
tell us nothing of the liquid. Johnstone, in his 4 Chemistry of Common Life,’ 
says, “Both the solid and liquid portions have the same general properties , 
and that both are equally sweet.” Dr. Ilassall, in his work on 4 Food and its 
Adulterations,’ says 44 that the solid part of honey, when examined, shows my¬ 
riads of regularly-formed crystals, identical in form with cane sugar .” This 
probably is a misprint. The best account, though a brief one, is that in Dr. 
Attfield’s 4 Pharmaceutical Chemistry.’ 
V 
The author’s experiments serve to show that there are three principal sugars 
in the honey of the shops, varying their proportion according to age; and, as 
will be noticed further on, that all these are derived from the decomposition of 
cane-sugar, or sucrose (C 12 H 22 O n ). 
Sucrose, when pure, forms very fine, large, oblique, rhombic prisms, and crys¬ 
tallizes in masses, as well seen in sugar-candy. When the crystals are small, as 
for microscopic observation, they generally crystallize on their sides, when they 
appear as if the ends were truncated, and the edges at right angles to each 
other. This is simply owing to their position. A solution of sucrose always 
Fig. 1.—English Honey. Magnified 265 diam. 
turns a ray of polarized light from left to right, and is therefore commonly 
called right-handed sugar. When acted upon by nitrogenous matter, as‘that 
in fresh honey, this crystallizable sucrose becomes partly changed into uncrys- 
tallizable sugar, or inverted sugar, because it turns a polarized ray of light from 
right to left. • . _ . 
Freshly gathered honey contains both of these, mixed with a third kind ot 
