The avaricious bee that despised the slow process of extracting nectar from "every opening flower," and plunged recklessly into the tempting sweets, has ample time to bewail its folly. Even if it has not paid the forfeit of its life, but has been able to obtain its fill, it returns home with all its beautiful plumage sullied and besmeared, and with a woe-begone look, and sorrowful note, in marked contrast with the bright hues and merry sounds with which the industrious bee returns from its happy rovings amid "the budding honey flowers, and sweetly breathing fields."
Just so, has many a pilgrim from the golden shores of California and Australia, returned; enfeebled in body and mind, bankrupt often in character and happiness, if not in purse, and unfitted in every way, for the calm and sober pursuits of common industry; while thousands, yes, and tens of thousands too, shall never more behold their once happy homes. Bibles and Sabbaths, altars and firesides, parents and friends, wife and children, how often have all these been wantonly abandoned, in the accursed greed for gain, by those who might have been happy and prosperous at home, and who wandered from its sacred precincts only because they were determined to make the possession of wealth, the chief object of life, but whose bones now lie amid the coral reefs of the ocean, or moulder in the howling wastes of the "overland passage;" just as the bones of the unbelieving Israelites whitened the sands of the desert. Of those who have reached the "land of" golden "promise," how many have died in despair, or worse still, are living so besotted by vice, so lost to all power of virtuous resolutions, that they shall never more see the happy homes from which they so thoughtlessly wandered, never more hear the soft accents of loving friends; never more worship God, in a peaceful Sanctuary, or ever again behold an opened Bible!
"Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold!
Bright and yellow, hard and cold,
Molten, graven, hammer'd, and roll'd;
Heavy to get, and light to hold;
Hoarded, barter'd, bought, and sold,
Stolen, borrow'd, squander'd, doled:
Spurn'd by the young, but hugg'd by the old
To the very verge of the churchyard mould;
Price of many a crime untold;
Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold!
Good or bad a thousand-fold!
How widely its agencies vary—
To save—to ruin—to curse—to bless—
As even its minted coins express,
Now stamp'd with the image of Good Queen Bess,
And now of a Bloody Mary!"
Hood.
CHAPTER XVI.
HONEY. PASTURAGE. OVERSTOCKING.
In the chapter on Feeding, it has already been stated that honey is not a natural secretion of the bee, but a substance obtained from the nectaries of the blossoms; it is not therefore, made, but merely gathered by the bees. The truth is well expressed in the lines so familiar to most of us from our childhood,
"How doth the little busy bee
Improve each shining hour,
And gather honey all the day
From every opening flower."
Bees not only gather honey from the blossoms, but often obtain it in large quantities from what have been called honey dews; "a term applied to those sweet, clammy drops that glitter on the foliage of many trees in hot weather." Two different opinions have been zealously advocated as to the origin of honey-dews. By some, they are considered a natural exudation from the leaves of trees, a perspiration as it were, occasioned often by ill health, though sometimes a provision to enable the plants to resist the fervent heats to which they are exposed. Others insist that this sweet substance is discharged from the bodies of those aphides or small lice which infest the leaves of so many plants. Unquestionably they are produced in both ways.
Messrs. Kirby and Spence, in their interesting work on Entomology, have given a description of the kind of honey-dew furnished by the aphides.
"The loves of the ants and the aphides have long been celebrated; and that there is a connection between them, you may, at any time in the proper season, convince yourself; for you will always find the former very busy on those trees and plants on which the latter abound; and if you examine more closely, you will discover that the object of the ants, in thus attending upon the aphides, is to obtain the saccharine fluid secreted by them, which may well be denominated their milk. This fluid, which is scarcely inferior to honey in sweetness, issues in limpid drops from the abdomen of these insects, not only by the ordinary passage, but also by two setiform tubes placed, one on each side, just above it. Their sucker being inserted in the tender bark, is without intermission employed in absorbing the sap, which, after it has passed through their system, they keep continually discharging by these organs. When no ants attend them, by a certain jerk of the body, which takes place at regular intervals, they ejaculate it to a distance."
"Mr. Knight once observed," says Bevan, "a shower of honey-dew descending in innumerable small globules, near one of his oak-trees, on the 1st of September; he cut off one of the branches, took it into the house, and holding it in a stream of light, which was purposely admitted through a small opening, distinctly saw the aphides ejecting the fluid from their bodies with considerable force, and this accounts for its being frequently found in situations where it could not have arrived by the mere influence of gravitation. The drops that are thus spurted out, unless interrupted by the surrounding foliage, or some other interposing body, fall upon the ground; and the spots may often be observed, for some time, beneath and around the trees affected with honey-dew, till washed away by the rain. The power which these insects possess of ejecting the fluid from their bodies, seems to have been wisely instituted to preserve cleanliness in each individual fly, and indeed for the preservation of the whole family; for pressing as they do upon one another, they would otherwise soon be glued together, and rendered incapable of stirring. On looking steadfastly at a group of these insects (Aphides Salicis) while feeding on the bark of the willow, their superior size enables us to perceive some of them elevating their bodies and emitting a transparent substance in the form of a small shower."