Asia Minor which give to the honey not only disagreeable, but poisonous qualities. He tells us that the soldiers, having eaten a quantity of honey in the environs of Trebizonde, were seized with vertigo, vomitings. &c. This effect was attributed to the rose-laurel, (Rhododendron Ponticum,) and yellow azalea, (Azalea Pontica.) Father Lamberti, also, assures us that a shrub of Mingrelia produces a kind of honey which causes very deleterious effects. It is quite possible that the poisonous juices extracted from these plants might be innoxious to the Bees themselves, and thus the correctness of their taste might be so far vindicated. Sir J. E. Smith asserts, that "the nectar of plants is not poisonous to Bees;" and an instance is given in the American Philosophical Transactions, of a party of young men, who, induced by the prospect of gain, having removed their hives from Pennsylvania to the Jerseys, where there are vast savannahs, finely painted with the flowers of the Kalmia angustifolia, could not use or dispose of their honey on account of its intoxicating quality; yet "the Bees increased prodigiously;" an increase only to be explained, says Dr. Bevan in his Honey-Bee, by their being well and harmlessly fed. Nor is this defence of the taste of Bees successfully controverted by the following occurrence stated in Nicholson's Journal.[1] "A large swarm of Bees having settled," observe that they had merely alighted upon it, to rest perhaps after a long flight, "on a branch of the poison-ash, (Rhus Vernix, L.) in the county of West
- ↑ Page 287.
