containing from 70 to 75% of silica in a state of very fine division, intimately blended with about 20 to 25% of calcite. It is obtained only in small pieces, frequently flawed and not tough, so that the slabs must have a backing of slate or wood. It is one of the most valuable of all whetstones, abrading the hardest steel, and possessing sufficient compactness to resist the pressure required for sharpening gravers. The stone comes from the interior of Asia Minor, whence it is carried to Smyrna. Of Arkansas stones there are two varieties, both found in the same district, Garland and Saline counties, Arkansas, United States. The finer kind, known as Arkansas hone, is obtained in small pieces at the Hot Springs, and the second quality, distinguished as Washita stone, comes from Washita or Ouachita river. The hones yield on analysis 98% of silica, with small proportions of alumina, potash and soda, and mere traces of iron, lime, magnesia and fluorine. They are white in colour, extremely hard and keen in grit, and not easily worn down or broken. Geologically the materials are called novaculites, and are supposed to be metamorphosed sandstone silt, chert or limestone resulting from the permeation through the mass of heated alkaline siliceous waters. The finer kind is employed for fine cutting instruments, and also for polishing steel pivots of watch-wheels and similar minute work, the second and coarser quality being used for common tools. Both varieties are largely exported from the United States in the form of blocks, slips, pencils, rods and wheels. Other honestones are obtained in the United States from New York, New Hampshire, Vermont, Ohio (Deerlick stone) and Indiana (Hindostan or Orange stone). Among hones of less importance in general use may be noted the Charley Forest stone—or Whittle Hill honestone—a good substitute for Turkey oilstone; Water of Ayr stone, Scotch stone, or snake stone, a pale grey carboniferous shale hardened by igneous action, used for tools and for polishing marble and copper-plates; Idwal or Welsh oilstone, used for small articles; and cutlers’ greenstone from Snowdon, very hard and close in texture, used for giving the last edge to lancets.
HONEY (Chin. mē; Sansk. madhu, mead, honey; cf. A.S.
medo, medu, mead; Gr. μέλι, in which θ or δ is changed into
λ; Lat. mel; Fr. miel; A.S. hunig; Ger. Honig),[1] a sweet
viscid liquid, obtained by bees (see Bee, Bee-keeping) chiefly
from the nectaries of flowers, i.e. those parts of flowers specially
constructed for the elaboration of honey, and, after transportation
to the hive in the proventriculus or crop of the insects, discharged
by them into the cells prepared for its reception. Whether the
nectar undergoes any alteration within the crop of the bee
is a point on which authors have differed. Some wasps, e.g.
Myrapetra scutellaris[2] and the genus Nectarina, collect honey.
A honey-like fluid, which consists of a nearly pure solution of
uncrystallizable sugar having the formula C6H14O7 after drying
in vacuo, and which is used by the Mexicans in the preparation
of a beverage, is yielded by certain inactive individuals of
Myrmecocystus mexicanus, Wesmael, the honey-ants or pouched
ants (hormigas mieleras or mochileras) of Mexico.[3] The abdomen
in these insects, owing to the distensibility of the membrane
connecting its segments, becomes converted into a globular
thin-walled sac by the accumulation within it of the nectar
supplied to them by their working comrades (Wesmael, Bull.
de l’Acad. Roy. de Brux. v. 766, 1838). By the Rev. H. C.
M‘Cook, who discovered the insect in the Garden of the Gods,
Colorado, the honey-bearers were found hanging by their feet,
in groups of about thirty, to the roofs of special chambers in
their underground nests, their large globular abdomens causing
them to resemble “bunches of small Delaware grapes” (Proc.
Acad. Nat. Sci. Philad., 1879, p. 197). A bladder-like formation
on the metathorax of another ant, Crematogaster inflatus (F.
Smith, Cat. of Hymenoptera, pt. vi. pp. 136 and 200, pl. ix. fig. 1),
which has a small circular orifice at each posterior lateral angle,
appears to possess a function similar to that of the abdomen
in the honey-ant.
It is a popular saying that where is the best honey there also is the best wool; and a pastoral district, since it affords a greater profusion of flowers, is superior for the production of honey to one under tillage.[4] Dry warm weather is that most favourable to the secretion of nectar by flowers. This they protect from rain by various internal structures, such as papillae, cushions of hairs and spurs, or by virtue of their position (in the raspberry, drooping), or the arrangement of their constituent parts. Dr A. W. Bennett (How Flowers are Fertilized, p. 31, 1873) has remarked that the perfume of flowers is generally derived from their nectar; the blossoms of some plants, however, as ivy and holly, though almost scentless, are highly nectariferous. The exudation of a honey-like or saccharine fluid, as has frequently been attested, is not a function exclusively of the flowers in all plants. A sweet material, the manna of pharmacy, e.g. is produced by the leaves and stems of a species of ash, Fraxinus Ornus; and honey-secreting glands are to be met with on the leaves, petioles, phyllodes, stipules (as in Vicia sativa), or bracteae (as in the Maregraviaceae) of a considerable number of different vegetable forms. The origin of the honey-yielding properties manifested specially by flowers among the several parts of plants has been carefully considered by Darwin, who regards the saccharine matter in nectar as a waste product of chemical changes in the sap, which, when it happened to be excreted within the envelopes of flowers, was utilized for the important object of cross-fertilization, and subsequently was much increased in quantity, and stored in various ways (see Cross and Self Fertilization of Plants, pp. 402 sq., 1876). It has been noted with respect to the nectar of the fuchsia that it is most abundant when the anthers are about to dehisce, and absent in the unexpanded flower.
Pettigrew is of opinion that few bees go more than 2 m. from home in search of honey. The number of blossoms visited in order to meet the requirements of a single hive of bees must be very great; for it has been found by A. S. Wilson (“On the Nectar of Flowers,” Brit. Assoc. Rep., 1878, p. 567) that 125 heads of common red clover, which is a plant comparatively abundant in nectar, yield but one gramme (15.432 grains) of sugar; and as each head contains about 60 florets, 7,500,000 distinct flower-tubes must on this estimate be exhausted for each kilogramme (2.204 ℔) of sugar collected. Among the richer sources of honey are reckoned the apple, asparagus, asters, barberry, basswood (Tilia americana), and the European lime or linden (T. europaea), beans, bonesets (Eupatorium), borage, broom, buckwheat, catnip, or catmint (Nepeta Cataria), cherry, cleome, clover, cotton, crocus, currant, dandelion, eucalyptus, figwort (Scrophularia), furze, golden-rod (Solidago), gooseberry, hawthorn, heather, hepatica, horehound, hyacinth, lucerne, maple, mignonette, mint, motherwort (Leonurus), mustard, onion, peach, pear, poplar, quince, rape, raspberry, sage, silver maple, snapdragon, sour-wood (Oxydendron arboreum, D.C.), strawberry, sycamore, teasel, thyme, tulip-tree (more especially rich in pollen), turnip, violet and willows, and the “honey-dew” of the leaves of the whitethorn (Bonner), oak, linden, beech and some other trees.
Honey contains dextroglucose and laevoglucose (the former practically insoluble, the latter soluble in 18 pt. of cold strong alcohol), cane-sugar (according to some), mucilage, water, wax, essential oil, colouring bodies, a minute quantity of mineral matter and pollen. By a species of fermentation, the cane-sugar is said to be gradually transformed into inverted sugar (laevoglucose with dextroglucose). The pollen, as a source of nitrogen, is of importance to the bees feeding on the honey. It may be obtained for examination as a sediment from a mixture of honey and water. Other substances which have been discovered in honey are mannite (Guibourt), a free acid which precipitates the salts of silver and of lead, and is soluble in water and alcohol (Calloux), and an uncrystallizable sugar, nearly related to inverted sugar (Soubeiran, Compt. Rend. xxviii. 774-775, 1849). Brittany honey contains couvain, a ferment which determines its active decomposition (Wurtz, Dict. de Chem. ii. 430). In the honey of Polybia apicipennis, a wasp
- ↑ The term honey in its various forms is peculiar to the Teutonic group of languages, and in the Gothic New Testament is wanting, the Greek word being there translated melith.
- ↑ See A. White, in Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist. vii. 315, pl. 4.
- ↑ Wetherill (Chem. Gaz. xi. 72, 1853) calculates that the average weight of the honey is 8.2 times that of the body of the ant, or 0.3942 grammes.
- ↑ Compare Isa. vii. 15, 22, where curdled milk (A.V. “butter”) and honey as exclusive articles of diet are indicative of foreign invasion, which turns rich agricultural districts into pasture lands or uncultivated wastes.
