_Prime honey_ is of a whitish colour, an agreeable smell, a pleasant taste, and a thick consistence. When taken from the combs it is in a fluid state, but gradually thickens by age, and in cold weather, if genuine, it becomes firm and solid. In England, it has seldom, if ever, been known to assume this solid state while in the hives; and even out of them, if it remain in the combs, it will preserve its clearness, purity and fine flavour, for at least a year. The honey of tropical climates is always in a fluid state. _Vide_ chapter on Exotic Bees. _Much of the fine flavour of honey will depend upon the manner of its separation from the comb._ That will be the most delicate which flows spontaneously from the purest and whitest combs; the next in excellence will be that which is expressed without heat; and the coarsest, that which is obtained by the aid of heat and pressure. Care should be taken in the selection of _the vessels used for storing honey;_ the most appropriate are _jars of stone ware_, called Bristol ware. The principal _constituents of sugar and honey_ are the same; viz. hydrogen, carbon, and oxygen. Besides these their common elements, honey contains mucilage and extractive matter, and also an excess of oxygen: in plain English, honey possesses a greater proportion of acid than is contained in sugar, and in a state more capable of acting upon those bodies with which it comes in contact. From this the reader will perceive my reason for recommending stone jars for its preservation: the acid of the honey acting upon the lead with which every other kind of earthenware is glazed, causes the honey to receive an impregnation from it, which may prove injurious to those whose constitutions are delicate: the stone ware, being glazed with common salt, cannot communicate any injurious property to the honey which is stored in it. _Honey should be kept in a cool and dry situation_, as warmth promotes fermentation and generates a sensible acidity. The circumstance of honey, when separated from the combs and put into jars, being disposed to ferment in a temperature much below the usual heat of a hive, is calculated to excite our admiration of the instinctive intelligence of the bee, which leads it to distribute its treasure in small cells and to seal them closely over, whereby the honey can be preserved from fermentation for a long period, even in a high temperature. +Proust+ _says that granulated honey is capable of being separated into two parts_, one of which is liquid, the other dry and not deliquescent, crystallizable in its manner and less saccharine than sugar. _The Jews of Moldavia and the Ukraine prepare from honey a sort of sugar_ which is solid and as white as snow, which they send to the distilleries at Dantzic. They expose the honey to frost for three weeks, in some place where neither sun nor snow can reach it, and in a vessel which is a bad conductor of caloric, by which process the honey, without