84 
BRITISH BEES. 
quisite. At Veit-el-Fakeh, wax from tlie mountainous 
country of Yemen is exchanged for European goods and 
for spices from the further Indies. In Syria and Pales¬ 
tine we find bees abound. At Ladaldah there are large 
exports both of honey and wax; and the honey of Ain- 
nete, on the declivities of the Lebanon, is considered the 
finest of the whole of that mountain-range. Antonine 
the Martyr, in the seventh century, speaks of the honey 
of Nazareth being most excellent, and in the present 
day bees are extensively cultivated at Bethlehem, for the 
sake of the profit derived from the wax tapers supplied 
to the pilgrims. Some of the members of the German 
colony at Wadi Urtas speak of the purchase of eleven 
beehives at this place, and express themselves as very 
sanguine of an abundant harvest from the luxuriance and 
profusion of flowers, although they say the bees are 
smaller than those of Westphalia, and are of a yellowish- 
brown colour. The eastern side of this peninsula, espe¬ 
cially the district of Oman, is wholly destitute of bees, 
contrasting thus unfavourably with its western fertility. 
The enormous quantities of honey produced may be 
comparatively estimated by the collateral production of 
beeswax, which it exceeds by at least ten to one. When 
we reflect upon what masses of the latter are consumed 
in the rites of the Roman Catholic and Greek churches 
throughout the many and large countries where those 
religions prevail, we shall be able to form a general esti¬ 
mate of the extensiveness and universality of the cultiva¬ 
tion of bees. Nor are those the only uses to which wax is 
applied, and the collective computation of its consump¬ 
tion will show that bees abound in numbers almost 
transcending belief. 
The name of bougie for wax-candle or taper, is used 
