29
CAN BEES HARM THE SOIL OR THE CROPS?
is, then, the question to be considered. The agriculturist may say, "Granting that the visits of bees may be serviceable to me in the fertilisation of my fruit or my clover, how will you prove that I am not obliged to pay too high a price for such services?” For the answer to such a question one must fall back upon the researches of the agricultural chemist, which will furnish satisfactory evidence to establish the two following facts: First, that saccharine matter, even when assimilated and retained within the body of a plant, is not one of the secretions of vegetable life which can in any way tend to exhaust the soil, being made up of constituents which are furnished everywhere in superabundance by the atmosphere and rain-water, and not containing any of the mineral cr organic substances supplied by the soil or by the manures used in agriculture; and, secondly, that in the form in which it is appropriated by bees, either from the nectaries of flowers or as honeydew from the leaves, it no longer constitutes a part of the plant, but is in fact an excrement, thrown off as superfluous, which if not collected by the bee and by its means made available for the use of man would either be devoured by other insects which do not store honey, or be resolved into its original elements and dissipated in the air.
The foregoing statements can be supported by reference to authorities which can leave no doubt as to their correctness-namely, Sir Humphrey Davy in his “Elements of Agricultural Chemistry," written more than seventy years ago, and Professor Liebig in his “Chemistry in its Application to Agriculture and Physiology," written some ten years later, and the English version of which is edited by Dr. Lyon Playfair and Professor Gregory. These works, which may be said to form the foundation of a rational system of agriculture, were written with that object alone in view, and the passages about to be quoted were not intended to support any theory in favour of bee-culture or otherwise; they deal simply with scientific truths which the layman can safely follow and accept as true upon such undeniable authority, although he may be incapable himself of following up the processes which have led to their discovery or which prove their correctness.
SACCHARINE MATTER OF PLANTS NOT DERIVED FROM THE SOIL.
Liebig, when describing the chemical processes connected with the nutrition of plants, informs us (at page 4*) that—
There are two great classes into which all vegetable products may be arranged. The first of these contain nitrogen; in the last this element
- The edition to which reference is made is the fourth, published 1847.
