Switzerland,--Huber and Reaumur in France, and a host of writers in Germany, and in our own native England; what opposite opinions have been entertained respecting honey; whether plants and flowers secrete pure honey, or whether the saccharine matter culled from them undergoes any percolating, rectifying, chemical process in the stomach of the Bee.--I might observe, that the illustrious Hunter was of opinion that it undergoes no change; although the no less illustrious naturalist Reaumur, and the entomologists Kirby and Spence, imagine that some change does take place before the honey is stored in the cells,--that, as the nectarious exudation of plants is not of the same consistence as honey from the hives, it is reasonable to suppose that it undergoes some change _in transitu_ whilst in the body of the Bee; that, as far as my experience has enabled me to make observations on this subject, I am disposed to lean to the opinion of Reaumur, Kirby, and Spence, and to ascribe the difference between honey in the nectarium of a flower or on the leaf of a tree, and honey in the cells of a comb, to the absorption of the volatile parts of the saccharine of the plants and flowers whilst in the honey-bag; which absorption is aided and accelerated by the natural heat of the Bee, and by which process honey is rendered of uniform consistence, in the graphic language of my chemical friend--Mr. Booth--I might exclaim, "How necessarily do the least valued products in the economy of nature, eliminated in the most miniature laboratory of her operations, confirm us in the belief of the existence, wisdom, and power of nature's God--the Great Chemist--who has not only imbued matter to act upon its fellow matter in the infinity of space, to produce an infinite diversity of changes in the material world; but, within the small compass of a Bee, has provided apparatus for certain changes to take place, which are more elaborate, important, and complicated, than are produced in the largest apparatus of the manufacturer! In this little insect are performed all those chemical processes of life, by which nature is kept in the equanimity and beauty of existence--here composition and decomposition, solution and precipitation, sublimation, volatilization, distillation, and absorption, through the agency of heat and attraction, take place on the minutest matters, secreted by the plants and collected by the Bees; and in the hive, by the concentration of their individual efforts, is elaborated that immense quantity of those important products, which constitute such useful commodities in the arts and economy of life." [Footnote N: See page 11, antea.]