LOGWOOD 
and does not granulate quickly. Unfor¬ 
tunately frost kills a part of the bloom in 
late seasons, but trees on the hills do not 
suffer as much as those in the valleys. 
Two other species of locust occur in 
eastern North America. The clammy locust, 
or R. viscosa, is similar to the above; but 
its flowers are tinged with pink and are in¬ 
odorous. It is a native of the mountains 
from Virginia to Georgia, but has been in¬ 
troduced in the North where it seems per¬ 
fect^ hardy. The other species, bristly 
locust or rose acacia ( R. hispida), is a 
shrub growing from three to ten feet high. 
The stems are covered with bristles, hence 
the name. The flowers are large, rose-col¬ 
ored, not fragrant, and few in a cluster. 
It is a native of the mountains from Vir¬ 
ginia to Georgia, but has also been intro¬ 
duced and become established in the North. 
While of no particular value as a honey, 
plant, it is very beautiful as a cultivated 
shrub. 
LOGWOOD (Haematoxylon campeachi- 
anum ).—A tree found in the West Indies 
and Central America, the heartwood of 
which furnishes one of the important 
vegetable dyes. In its early stages the 
heart is only a small colored core, but at 
maturity there is little sapwood between 
the heart and the bark. The dyewood is 
prepared for shipment by digging up the 
trees by the roots, and chipping away the 
outer sapwood; the colored core is then 
ready to be rendered into dye. 
There are large areas in the tropics, 
where this tree is the predominating 
growth. When in full bloom, many square 
miles of country are suffused with the mel¬ 
low beauty of its golden blossoms, and the 
air is everywhere filled with the pleasing 
and delicate perfume. The honey is almost 
white, very dense, and possesses a peculiar¬ 
ly pleasant flavor suggestive of the fra¬ 
grance of the bloom. But in American 
markets it does not sell as readily or com¬ 
mand as high a price as white clover honey. 
In Jamaica logwood is the principal 
source of honey. There are usually two 
main periods of bloom—one occurring in 
November and the other about Christmas 
time. The first bloom is not wholly de¬ 
pendable, as it is usually light. At the same 
time there are other plants in bloom, as 
573 
bitterbush, which yield an inferior honey, 
so that the finished combs held up to the 
light reveal a patchwork of various colors. 
But this mixed flow is valuable since it en¬ 
ables the bees to fill the brood-chambers, 
and thus later causes them to carry the 
main logwood flow into the supers. 
The second or main flow occurs about 
Christmas time, and may last thru Janu¬ 
ary. Here lies the hope of the apiarist. 
Two factors then contribute to his crop. 
The first is the condition of his colonies. 
They must be ready, or the finest honey of 
the year goes to brood and brood-combs. 
Even if barrels of sugar must be fed, a 
super should be on every hive, and bees in 
the supers by the middle of December. The 
second factor is rain. “We have watched,” 
says a Jamaican beekeeper, “the great 
strings of buds drooping heavily down¬ 
ward, and the forests beaded with folded 
blossoms all ready to burst—one factor 
was missing—rain. We have seen, while 
full apiaries waited, the untempered tor¬ 
rid sun burn the blossoms into ci’umbled 
dust. But let the rains fall at the proper 
juncture, and thousands of acres burst into 
fairyland. We have seen evenings when 
everything looked hopeless. That night a 
shower fell. At daybreak the apiary was 
a-roar, and the clear atmosphere was black 
with bees.” Of course, the duration of the 
principal bloom is also dependent upon light 
intermittent showers. There have been sea¬ 
sons when the main bloom lasted for six 
weeks, and individual colonies made as high 
as 500 pounds of honey. In four days 250 
colonies are reported to have gathered 6000 
pounds of honey. A rain at night abrupt¬ 
ly ended the flow and the blossoms the 
next morning had turned brown. 
Is there no danger of the logwood for¬ 
ests being destroyed? Hardly, unless the 
land is desired for agriculture. Logwood 
grows spontaneously in the forests and the 
growth is so extensive that there is no ne¬ 
cessity of planting young trees—the only 
attention required is the thinning out of 
the yearly natural propagation. Otherwise 
the logwood estate needs little attention. 
The main expense is to prepare the mature 
stock for market, and this consists in pay¬ 
ing laborers so much per ton for “chip¬ 
ping.” Owing, however, to the rapid in¬ 
troduction of aniline dyes, the logwood in- 
