Such are some of the processes by which the honey and wax of bees are made available to our use. Honey is of less importance to mankind since the discovery of sugar; but it will always rank among the wholesome and agreeable luxuries of life; while in countries where sugar is not so easily obtained as it is among ourselves, it holds a much more important position. In the Ukraine, some of the peasants have four or five hundred bee-hives, and make more profit of their bees than of their corn. In Spain, also, the number of bee-hives is said to be immense, a single parish priest having been known to possess five thousand. Rock-honey, found in some parts of America, is thin and clear as water, and is the produce of wild bees, which suspend thirty or forty waxen cells, resembling a bunch of grapes, to a rock. Green honey, found in the Isle of Bourbon, and exported to India, where it fetches a high price, is the produce of a bee much esteemed in that island. It produces sweet and fragrant honey, of the consistency of oil, and of a green colour. [Illustration: ANOTHER INTERIOR OF A BEE-HIVE. ] [Illustration: MALE COCHINEAL INSECT.—(_Magnified._) ] [Illustration: FEMALE.—_Upper surface._ ] [Illustration: FEMALE.—_Under surface._ ] CHAPTER VI. MANUFACTURE OF COCHINEAL BY THE COCCUS CACTI, OR COCHINEAL INSECT. The cochineal insect is extremely valuable in commerce, as yielding a brilliant red dye, and we may with propriety class it among insect manufactures, because, although its destruction is necessary to obtain the colouring matter, (the actual body of the insect forming the dye,) yet this beautiful colour is elaborated from the food on which it feeds, as honey and wax are elaborated by the bee, or silk by the silkworm. We do not find, it is true, any especial care or effort on the part of the insect in the production of the cochineal, and in this respect it differs from the examples already given; but the rich colour which pervades the body of the insect appears to result simply from the juices of the particular species of cactus on which it feeds. Yet being to us the only means of obtaining the brilliant dye in question, the cochineal insects must be reckoned highly useful, though involuntary, manufacturers.