rabbit is of little value it had better be killed at once, but if a valuable one to attempt the cure is worth a trial. Treatment, three drachms nitre powder, two drachms of ginger in powder, quarter pound common salt, three pints boiling water poured over these and when luke-warm add three ounces of rectified spirits of turpentine and agitate thoroughly-teaspoonful early each morning, an hour before the rabbit is fed, repeated three times at intervals of four days. Shake mixture well before giving it.

(VI.) CONSTIPATION.-Rabbit needs green food also a little salts and carraway.

a

(VII.) DIARRHEA.-Give dry food and acorns, little ground cinnamon in new milk is good. The dung of the rabbit being in the form of a pill it is easy to detect either constipation or diarrhoea in any valuable rabbit.

(VIII.) MANGE.-Treat with sprinkling of flowers of sulphur on parts affected, and give judiciously green food.

There are other diseases, but these are the chief. Rabbitries must be kept dry, clean and sweet. Sawdust is very useful in the alleys and backs of hutches, being absorbent. On the Continent, to fatten rabbits and better keep them loose in numbers castration is largely used. Rabbit warrens, under certain conditions, pay and yield large profits to several owners in Great Britain. These should be in a dry not clay soil.

The prices of good fancy rabbits are high, and help largely to make up the good margin of profit on systematic and economic rabbit culture. I have often had five pounds for specially good rabbits, but the main item. of the profit is from the regular supply sold weekly, and the more this is done directly to the consumer the better.

V. H. MOYLE.

CHAPTER LXI.

BEE PRODUCTS (HONEY AND WAX AND THEIR
APPLICATIONS).

BY THE REV. V. H. MOYLE, M.A., F.R. H.S.,

Vicar of Ashampstead, Berks; Member of the Council of the Swanley Horticultural College; Vice-President of the Berks, and also of the Wilts, Bee Keepers' Association; and Sole Medallist for Honey and Wax Applications at the Health Exhibition, 1884, and many other places, 1885-90, and '91.

THE pages of this book being devoted to showing what may be made of the land, it may not be amiss to show also what can be done with the products of the "little busy bee," for every well-ordered farm and garden has its apiary, and our fathers, perhaps, generally esteemed the bees' products higher than we do. I will not here dwell on the valuable medicinal properties of "apic acid," prepared from the poison bag of the bee, a homœopathic bottle of which is now before me, as the very idea of a bee sting is dreadful to some folk, but I will pass at once to consider several of the applications of honey and wax, and why I have given some time to their uses.

Being a bee-keeper, and whilst acting as Honorary Secretary to the Berkshire Bee Keepers' Association some years ago, I often lectured on bees and bee-keeping, and many were induced through my lectures to begin beekeeping. It occurred to me that it would help on "apiculture" if I exhibited at the Health Exhibition some of the applications of honey and wax which I have

been instrumental in getting made by eminent manufacturers and others. There was no class in that exhibition's catalogue for goods wherein honey or wax were mentioned, but my exhibit attracted so much kindly notice from the judges, and also the general public, that a special certificate and silver medal was awarded to me as a pioneer of progress in this direction, and subsequently, at a great number of other exhibitions in England and Wales, Scotland and Ireland, similar honours have been awarded me for similar exhibits. I desire to draw the attention of my countrymen to the advantages of bee-keeping, because the products thereof can be so variously utilized.

Honey as a food," as an eminent German says, "is second to none, on account of its great solubility in the blood, its power of providing for the heating of the body, and the maintenance of life. I strongly recommend it as food for children, especially for those who are growing quickly, since it provides an easily digested food, and changes their pale faces and languid condition to rude health. It is also useful to the aged, from its heat-giving properties. Do you wish to enjoy a green old age? Eat daily the most precious food of the ancients—milk and honey. Break some bread in a cup with milk and pure honey. This is the most healthy, the most nourishing, and the most refreshing breakfast."

Now the quality of the honey consumed is very important, as there are many spurious forms introduced from Switzerland and America, and this spurious honey has in many cases caused a prejudice against the real thing. Mr. Otto Hehner, Honorary Secretary to the Society of Public Analysts, and Analyst to the British Beekeepers' Association, etc., etc., makes the following statement:-"Out of thirty-nine samples of honey purchased

from retail dealers, twenty-six being avowedly English, nine American, and four Swiss, twenty-four of the English samples were genuine, and two (which I have good reason to believe of American origin) were adulterated with corn syrup; of the nine American samples seven were adulterated, and of the four Swiss samples not one was genuine."

The English public seems as yet to prefer honey derived, nominally, from Alpine herbs, but practically from potatoes and sulphuric acid, and from mythical Californian bee farms, to that collected from English hedgerows and meadows and gardens.

Again, a well-known writer on this subject tells us that "When the English public have learnt to understand that the granulation of honey is a test of its purity, English honey must have the preference to that imported, which is usually mixed with glucose (corn syrup) ostensibly to prevent its granulation. In no country is honey produced that can excel that gathered in England."

The head master of a public school has said, “I can strongly recommend the use of pure English honey. My boys, and I have more than sixty in my house alone, are particularly fond of honey, and there is no better food for them. One of my children has derived manifest benefit from the constant use of it."

I am glad to say the imports of foreign and spurious honey are decreasing and the export of British honey increasing, and I have laboured hard to promote this state of things and also the increased use of honey and wax in various ways. Pure British honey, containing as it does the best saccharine element, of necessity affords the best saccharine portion to many high-class kinds of confectionery, preserves, medical preparations, beverages, etc. Honey, derived from the Hebrew ghoneg, literally

means "delight." It is a common expression "Honey is a luxury," but honey should rather be regarded as food in one of its most concentrated forms. True it does not add to the growth of muscle as does beef-steak, but it does impart other properties no less necessary to health and vigorous physical and intellectual action, and to the business man, mental force, a sweet disposition, and a bright intellect, if used regularly. One pound of honey will go as far as two pounds of butter.

Knowing well from classic literature how much the ancients used pure honey in various ways, it occurred to me, with a view to promote the increased production and sale of pure honey, to try in these modern times to get several leading firms to make various specialities of theirs with honey as the saccharine element, and I exhibited very many samples of these at the Health Exhibition, in 1884, and elsewhere since most successfully, and have had some imitators also.

Messrs. Huntley and Palmer, Reading-Honey Drop Biscuits.

Mr. J. Cross, Reading Corn and Honey Foodespecially food for children.

Messrs. Cadbury, Birmingham-Honey Crêmes and Honey Nougat Pistache.

Messrs. Fry & Sons, Bristol-Pure British Honey Chocolate Creams; ditto in tablets.

Messrs. Clarke, Nickolls & Coombes-British Honey Caramels.

Mr. Ward, Kensington-Honey Whole Meal Bread. Mr. Skuse, Praed Street, London-Honey Herbal Tablets.

Messrs. Field, Lambeth-British Honey Soap.

Messrs. Tunbridge and Wright, Reading-Quillaia and Honey Dentifrice Water, Honey Chap Ointment,