HONEY 137 without the application of heat. The honey obtained from old hives, considered inferior to it in quality, is ordinarily darker, thicker, and less pleasant in taste and odour. The yield of honey is less in proportion to weight iu old than in young or virgin combs. The far-famed honey of Nar- bonne is white, very granular, and highly aromatic; and still finer honey is that procured from the Corbieres moun tains, 6 to 9 miles to the south-west. The honey of Gatinais is usually w r hite, and is less odorous, and granulates less readily than that of Narbonne. Honey from white clover has a greenish-white, and that from heather a rich golden- yellow hue. What is made from honey-dew is dark in colour, and disagreeable to the palate, and does not candy like good honey. " We have seen aphide honey from syca mores," says F. Cheshire (Pract. Bee-Keeping, p. 74), " as deep in tone as walnut liquor, and where much of it is stored the value of the whole crop is practically nil." The honey of the stingless bees (Melipona and Trigona) of Brazil varies greatly in quality according to the species of flowers from which it is collected, some kinds being black and sour, and others excellent (F. Smith, Trans. Ent. Soc., 3d ser., i. pt. vi., 1863). That of Apis Peronii, of India and Timor, is yellow, and of very agreeable flavour, and is more liquid than the British sorts. A. unicolor, a bee indigenous to Madagascar, and naturalized in Mauritius and the island of Reunion, furnishes a thick and syrupy, peculiarly scented green honey, highly esteemed in Western India. A rose-coloured honey is stated (Gard. Chron., 1870, p. 1698) to have been procured by artificial feeding. The fine aroma of Maltese honey is due to its collection from orange blossoms. Narbonne honey being harvested chiefly from Labiate plants, as rosemary, an imitation of it is sometimes prepared by flavouring ordinary honey w r ith infusion of rosemary flowers. Adulterations of honey are starch, detectable by the microscope, and by its blue reaction with iodine, also wheaten flour, gelatin, chalk, gypsum, pipe-clay, added water, cane-sugar, and common syrup, ami the different varieties of manufactured glucose. Honey sophisticated with glucose containing copperas as an impurity is turned of an inky colour by liquids containing tannin, as tea. Elm leaves have been used in America for the flavouring of imitation honey. Stone jars should be employed in preference to common earthenware for the storage of honey, which acts upon the lead glaze of the latter. Honey is mildly laxative in properties. Some few kinds are poisonous, as frequently the reddish honey stored by the Brazilian wasp Nectarina (Polistes, Latr. 1 ) Leclieguana, Shuck., the effects of which have been vividly described by Aug. de Saint-Hilaire, 2 the spring honey of the wild bees of East Nepaul, said to be rendered noxious by collection from rhododendron flowers (Hooker, Himalayan Journals, i. 190, ed. 1855), and the honey of Trebizond, which from its source, the blossoms, it is stated, of Azalea pontica and Rhododendron ponticum (perhaps to be identified with Pliny s jEgolethron), acquires the qualities of an irritant and intoxicant narcotic, as described by Xenophon (Anab., iv. 8). Pliny (A T at. Hist., xxi. 45) describes as noxious a livid-coloured honey found in Persia and Grctulia. Honey obtained from Kalinin latifolia, L., the calico bush, moun tain laurel, or spoon-wood of the northern United States, and allied species, is reputed deleterious ; also that of the sour-wood is by some good authorities considered to possess undeniable griping properties; and G. Bidie (Madras Quart. Journ. Med. Sci., Oct. 1861, p. 399) mentions urtication, headache, extreme prostration and nausea, and intense thirst among the symptoms produced by a small quantity only of a honey from Coorg jungle. A South African species of Euphorbia, as was experienced by the missionary Moffat (Miss. Lab., p. 32, 1846), yields a poisonous honey. 1 Memoires du Museum, xi. 313, 1824.
- Ib., xii. 293, pi. xii. fig. B, 1825. The honey, according to
Lassaigne (ib., ix. 319), is almost entirely soluble in alcohol. The nectar of certain flowers is asserted to cause even in bees a fatal kind of vertigo. As a demulcent and flavour ing agent, honey is employed in the oxymel, oxymel scilloe, mel boracis, confectio jriperis, conf. scammonii, and conf. terelinthince of the British Pharmacopoeia. To the ancients honey was of very great importance as an article of diet, being almost their only available source of sugar. It was valued by them also for its medicinal virtues ; and in recipes of the Saxon and later periods it is a common ingredient. 3 Of the eight kinds of honey mentioned by the great Indian surgical writer Susruta, four are not described by recent authors, viz., argha, or wild honey, collected by a sort of yellow bee; chhatra, made by tawny or yellow wasps ; auddlaka, a bitter and acrid honey-like substance found in the nest of white ants ; and ddla, or unprepared honey occurring on flowers. According to Hindu medical writers, honey when new is laxative, and when more than a year old astringent (U. C. Dutt, Mat. Med. of the Hindus, p. 277, 1877). Ceromel, formed by mixing at a gentle heat one part by weight of yellow wax with four of clarified honey, and straining, is used in India and other tropical countries as a mild stimulant for ulcers in the place of animal fats, which there rapidly become rancid and unfit for medicinal purposes. The Koran, in the chapter entitled " The Bee," remarks with reference to bees and their honey: "There proceedeth from their bellies a liquor of various colour, wherein is a medicine for men " (Sale s Koran, chap. xvi.). Pills prepared with honey as an excipient are said to remain un- indurated, however long they may be kept (Med. Times, 1857, i. 269). Mead, of yore a favourite beverage in Eng land (vol. iv. p. 264), is made by fermentation of the liquor obtained by boiling in water combs from which the honey has been drained. In the preparation of sack-mead, an ounce of hops is added to each gallon of the liquor, and after the fermentation a email quantity of brandy. Metheglin, or hydromel, is manufactured by fermenting with yeast a solution of honey flavoured with boiled hops (see Cooley, Cyclop.}. A kind of mead is largely consumed in Abyssinia (vol. i. p. 64), where it is carried on journeys in large horns (Stern, Wanderings, p. 317, 1862). In Russia a drink termed lipetz is made from the delicious honey of the linden. The mulsum of the ancient Romans consisted of honey, wine, and water boiled together. The clarre, or piment, of Chaucer s time was wine mixed with honey and spices, and strained till clear; a similar drink was bracket, made with wort of ale instead of wine. L. Maurial (L Insectologie Agricole for 1868, p. 206) reports unfavourably as to the use of honey for the pro duction of alcohol ; he recommends it, however, as superior to sugar for the thickening of liqueurs, and also as a means of sweetening imperfectly ripened vintages. It is occasion ally employed for giving strength and flavour to ale. In ancient Egypt it was valued as an embalming material ; and in the East, for the preservation of fruit, and the making of cakes, sweatmeats, and other articles of food, it is largely consumed. Grafts, seeds, and birds eggs, for transmission to great distances, are sometimes packed in honey. In India a mixture of honey and milk, or of equal parts of curds, honey, and clarified butter (Sansk., madhu-parka], is a respectful offering to a guest, or to a bridegroom on his arrival at the door of the bride s father ; and one of the purificatory ceremonies of the Hindus (Sansk., madhu-prasana) is the placing of a little honey in the mouth of a new-born male infant. Honey is fre quently alluded to by the writers of antiquity as food for children ; it is not to this, however, as already mentioned, 3 Foralist of fifteen treatisesconcerninghoney.dating from 1625 to 1868, see Waring, Bibl. Therap., ii. 559, New Syd. Soc., 1879. On sundry ancient uses for honey, see Beckmann, Hist, of Invent., i. 287, 1846.
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