honey in vegetables, and consequently the operations of the bees. The quality of the saccharine fluid is influenced by various causes. Something depends on the particular period of the season in which it is collected. In Scotland, the best honey is gathered in the months of June and July, when the white clover (Trifolium repens,) is in bloom; and what is stored in spring, or rather in April and May, is purer and better flavoured than what is obtained in autumn, unless the bees have been during the latter season within reach of heath, the honey from which is of a rich wild flavour, but of a darker colour. The quality of honey is, of course, much influenced by the nature of the plants most frequented by the bees. The famed honey of Hymettus derives its excellence, it is said, from the wild thyme growing so luxuriantly on the celebrated mountain from which it derives its name; that of Narbonne, from the wild rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis.) The white Dutch clover, and the heath have been already noticed as furnishing honey of a superior kind; and there is a district in Galloway, North Britain, where perhaps the best honey in the kingdom is produced, owing, it is supposed, to the great abundance of wild thyme (Thymus serpyllum,) with which the country abounds.
Instances of honey of a deleterious nature being sometimes met with, have been already noticed, (p. 49.) We have seen it remarked, in Bee-publications, that the finest honey is got from young swarms; the fact is so, generally speaking, but not, as we might naturally be led to infer from the asser-
