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same plant Kalmia latifolia. This led to a public proclamation prohibiting the use of the pheasant for food during that season.

As most of the plants here enumerated are now introduced into our gardens, they might be supposed to injure the British honey. Most probably, however, their proportion to the whole of the flowers in bloom is too small to produce any such inconvenience; whereas on their native continent they exclusively cover whole tracts of country.

I cannot close this chapter on Bee-Pasturage, without adverting to what Linnæus has said of the Fritillaria imperialis or crown imperial, and of the Melianthus or honey-flower. Of the former, he observes that "no plant, melianthus alone excepted, abounds so much with honey, yet the bees do not collect it." Of the latter he remarks "that if it be shaken, whilst in flower, it distils a shower of nectar." This observation applies more particularly to the Melianthus major. And with respect to the Fritillaria, Dr. Evans says, "that the bees do sometimes visit it; and he thinks that they would do so oftener, but for the disagreeable foxlike smell that emanates from it."

The liquidambar and liriodendrum or tulip-tree, both which are so ornamental, the former to our shrubberies and the latter to larger plantations, have been much extolled, as affording food for

bees. The liquidambar bears bright saffron-coloured flowers, and highly perfumed and glossy leaves, and its whole rind exudes a fragrant gum. The liriodendrum is crowned with large bellshaped blossoms, of every rainbow hue, which give it a very splendid appearance.

CHAPTER V.

HONEY-DEW.

THE term HONEY-DEW is applied to those sweet clammy drops that glitter on the foliage of many trees in hot weather. The name of this substance would seem to import, that it is a deposition from the atmosphere, and this has been the generally received opinion respecting it, particularly among the ancients; it is an opinion still prevalent among the husbandmen, who suppose it to fall from the heavens: VIRGIL speaks of "Aërii mellis cœlestia dona:" and PLINY expresses his doubts, "sive ille est cœli sudor, sive quædam siderum saliva, sive purgantis se aëris succus." The Rev. GILBERT WHITE, in his Naturalist's Calendar, regards honey-dew as the effluvia of flowers, evaporated and drawn up into the atmosphere by the heat of the weather, and falling down again in the night with the dews that entangle them. But if this were the case, the fall would be indiscriminate, and we should not have it confined to particular trees and shrubs, nor would it be found upon green-house and other covered plants. Some naturalists have regarded honey-dew as an exudation or secretion from the surface of those leaves upon which it is found, produced by some atmo

spheric stroke, which has injured their health. Dr. DARWIN stands in this class. Others have viewed it as a kind of vegetable perspiration, which the trees emit for their relief in sultry weather; its appearance being never observed in a cold ungenial summer. Dr. EVANS is of this opinion, and makes the following comparative remark: "As the glutinous sweat of the negro enables him to bear the fervours of his native clime, far better than the lymph-perspiring European; so the saccharine dew of the orange, and the fragrant gum of the Cretan cistus, may preserve them amidst the heats even of the torrid zone. Mr. CURTIS has given it as his opinion that the honey-dew is an excrementitious matter, voided by the aphis or vine-fretter, an insect which he regards as the general cause of what are called blights. He assures us that he never, in a single instance, observed the honey-dew unattended with aphids.

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I believe it will be found that there are at least two sorts of honey-dew; the one a secretion from the surface of the leaf, occasioned by one of the causes just alluded to, the other a deposition from the body of the aphis. Sir J. E. SMITH observes of the sensible perspiration of plants, that "when watery, it can be considered only as a condensation of their insensible evaporation, perhaps from some sudden change in the atmosphere. Groves of

poplar or willow exhibit this phenomenon, even in England, in hot calm weather, when drops of clear water trickle from their leaves, like a slight shower of rain. Sometimes this secretion is of a saccharine nature, as DE LA HIRE observed in orange trees."

"It is somewhat glutinous in the tilia or lime tree, rather resinous in poplars, as well as in Cistus creticus." "Ovid has made an elegant use of the resinous exudations of Lombardy poplars, which he supposes to be the tears of Phaëton's sisters, who were transformed into those trees. Such exudations must be considered as effusions of the peculiar secretions; for it has been observed that manna may be scraped from the leaves of Fraxinus ornus, as well as be procured from its stem by incision. They are often perhaps a sign of unhealthiness in the plant; at least such appears to be the nature of one kind of honey-dew, found in particular upon the beech, which, in consequence of an unfavourable wind, has its leaves often covered with a sweet exudation, similar in flavour to the liquor obtained from its trunk. So likewise the hop, according to LINNEUS, is affected with the honey-dew, and its flowers are rendered abortive, in consequence of the attacks of the caterpillar of the Ghost moth (Phalana Humuli) upon its roots. In such case the saccharine exudation must decidedly be of a morbid nature."

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