HONEY DEW. 
291 
perfect ease, and that consummate skill which 
instinct renders almost infallible. 
The chicken, at the time it breaks the shell, is 
heavier than the whole egg was at first. 
An egg will not hatch in vacuo. 
The infinite wisdom of the Great Architect of 
the animal frame is remarkably manifested in its 
providing the chick with a sharp and hard sub¬ 
stance on the tip of the bill, by means of which it 
is enabled to fracture the shell to liberate itself 
from its imprisonment. Its own bill is too soft to 
enable it to break the shell therewith, and in two 
days or less this hard and pointed substance disap¬ 
pears, the young bird no longer requiring to use it. 
Equally extraordinary and wonderful is the fact 
that the germ of the chick is provided with the 
ability to keep itself always on the top of the yolk 
of the egg, to the end that it may take the heat 
from the parent bird when setting, to produce in¬ 
cubation. 
HONEY DEW. 
** At a late meeting of the Farmers’ Club at New 
York, the subject under consideration being ‘ In¬ 
sects injurious to Vegetation,’ the Chairman, Gen. 
Johnson of Long Island, is reported to have said, 
* It is my opinion that the dew (called by the 
Dutch, honey dew) which always falls in the latter 
part of June, always kills off most insects ; they 
uniformly disappear after it has fallen.’ Now, 
since I have embraced the new doctrine of cause 
and effect in the matter of blight and its conse¬ 
quences, I am led to consider the honey-dew 
merely the extravasated juices of the plant or tree, 
which, having been for a time in a stagnant 
and putrid state occasioned by unfriendly atmos¬ 
pherical influence, are at length thrown off by a 
new circulation of the sap; the effect being, the 
deprivation of food to the insect tribe, which are 
created for the purpose of feeding on putricity ; and 
hence the cause of their uniform disappearance .” 
The above is a communication addressed by Mr. 
W. Fay to the Boston Cultivator. We have con¬ 
sulted Mr. Browne, who is well versed in matters 
of this kind, and he regards honey-dew, in most 
cases, as the exudation of plant-lice (Aphides). 
He says, however, that there are saccharine exu¬ 
dations from the leaves of plants and trees, which 
are not distinguished by the name of honey-dew, 
as the labdanum from the cistis creticus, and the 
manna which exudes from the ash of Italy and the 
larch of France. There are also analogous pro¬ 
ductions observable on plants after very dry weath¬ 
er, which Mr. Murray, in his Treatise on Atmo¬ 
spheric Electricity, ascribes to an electric change in 
the air. The latter gentleman states that the 
honey-dew was found on plants that were entirely 
free from plant-lice, and so copious was this sub¬ 
stance, that had their number been a hundred fold, 
they could not certainly have been the source of 
the supply. He supposed that he set the question 
at rest by washing a leaf and wiping it dry with 
a sponge, immediately after which, he observed 
through a lens, that excreted globules were appa¬ 
rent ; but in this experiment might not the leaf 
have been previously wounded, perhaps, by the 
beak of a plant-louse, and hence the exudation of 
sap instead of honey-dew ? And may not the cir¬ 
cumstance of his finding the honey-dew on leaves 
where there were no plant-lice, be accounted for 
on the principle that these insects had left, as they 
always do, the parts covered with their exuda¬ 
tions ? Mr. Sauvages, in the Transactions of the 
Royal Society of Montpellier, remarks that aphides 
(plant-lice) are careful to eject the honey-dew to 
a distance from the place where they may be feed¬ 
ing. And Mr. Browne cites an instance of a plant 
of the Chinese Chrysanthemum, the young shoots 
of which swarmed with aphides, and that the 
leaves below were covered with honey-dew. The 
experiment was tried, of wiping it off from a leaf, 
and no more was formed when it was protected by 
a piece of paper from the aphides above. Besides, 
the paper became sprinkled with honey-dew in a 
few hours, and by means of a lens, the aphides 
were actually seen to eject their fluid. 
Dr. Harris, in his Report on the Insects of Mas¬ 
sachusetts, describes the habits of these insects as 
follows: “Plant-lice seem to love society, and 
often herd together in dense masses, each one re¬ 
maining fixed to the plant by means of its long 
tubular beak ; and they rarely change their places 
till they have exhausted the part first attacked. 
The attitudes and manners of these little crea¬ 
tures are exceedingly amusing. When disturbed, 
like restiff horses they begin to kick and sprawl 
in the most ludicrous manner. They may be seen, 
at times, suspended by their beaks alone, and 
throwing up their legs as if in a high frolic, but 
too much engaged in sucking to withdraw their 
beaks. As they take in great quantities of sap, 
they would soon become gorged if they did not get 
rid of the superabundant fluid through the two 
little tubes or pores in the extremities of their 
bodies. When one of them gets running over full, 
it seems to communicate its uneasy sensations, by 
a kind of animal magnetism, to the whole flock, 
upon which they all, with one accord, jerk up¬ 
ward their bodies, and eject a shower of the hon¬ 
eyed fluid.” 
The fecundity of aphides is almost incalcula¬ 
ble. Reaumur supposed that in one year there 
may be twenty generations, and he proved by 
experiment that one of these insects may be 
the parent of 5,904,900,000 descendents during 
its life! Latreille says one female, during the 
summer months, usuually produces about 25 a 
day ; and more than 1,000 have been counted on a 
single leaf of a hop. 
In regard to the remarks made by General 
Johnson, as quoted above, we should attribute the 
disappearance of most lepidopterous insects in the 
latter part of June, or beginning of July, to their 
passing from the larva or caterpillar to the pupa or 
chrysalis state. The honey-dew is in no way re¬ 
garded as poisonous, but, on the contrary, it is 
devoured with eagerness by ants, bees, ^nd other 
insects; and in the forests of Lithuania- this sub¬ 
stance and linden flowers afford the finest honey in 
the world. The above remarks ar* made, hoping 
that they will be the means of eliciting further 
information on this subject from those who are 
much more capable than ourselves of elucidating it. 
