GEOGRAPHY OF THE GENERA. 
87 
induced to surmise that these had possibly been tbs 
flowers the bees had extracted the honey from which 
had been so baneful to the troops of Xenophon. 
But it seems that bees themselves cannot collect with 
impunity the honey of noxious flowers, for they are oc¬ 
casionally subject to a disease resembling vertigo, from 
which they do not recover, and which is attributed to 
the poisonous nature of the flowers they have been re¬ 
cently visiting. 
Several different kinds of honey and wax have been 
described, but some degree of uncertainty exists as to 
whether they are all the produce of genuine species of the 
genus Apis; for it will be found, in a rapid notice I pur¬ 
pose giving of the more conspicuous genera of foreign 
bees, that there are two exotic genera of this section of 
the family, both social in their habits, and which both pro¬ 
duce the same materials; there is a wasp also that makes 
honey. But of all the many kinds of honey noticed, the 
green kind furnished to Western India by the island of 
Reunion, the produce of an Apis indigenous to Madagas¬ 
car, but which has been naturalized in the French island, 
and also in the Mauritius, is perhaps the most remarkable. 
It is of a thick syrupy consistency, and has a peculiar 
aroma. It is much esteemed upon the most proximate 
coasts of the peninsula of India, where it bears a high 
price. Whether its greenness of colour is derived from 
the flowers which this species frequents, or whether it be 
incidental to the nature of the bee, has not been ascer¬ 
tained, but the honey of the South American wasp, the 
sole species producing the material, has also a green tinge. 
Nature has assigned the task of thus catering for 
man, by collecting and garnering from the recondite 
crypts within the blossoms of flowers, to about sixteen 
