ther than to collect it from the leaves and nectaries of plants, to digest and deposite it in their waxen cells.

The savage Californian believes that it descends from heaven, and to this opinion he is probably influenced alike by observation and superstition.

The equally unenlightened inhabitants in the vicinity of the above mentioned morass, assert with confidence, that, during the prevalence of the honey, an attentive observer may perceive at sun rise, the honey-dew falling in long or hair-like particles.

A belief, so widely diffused, and embraced by persons ignorant of the existence of each other, would seem to be grounded in truth; but to dissent from popular opinion, and to explain phenomena by causes the least obvious, has ever been a fashionable maxim among philosophers.

Sauvages, of Montpelier, deduced from actual observation, that the production called honey-dew was of two kinds, the one an exudation from the vegetable; and the other the excrement of a species of aphis, which this insect acquired by piercing the sap vessels of the leaf, and voided almost unchanged on the leaves and ground beneath.

That a substance similar to the honey-dew in some respects is produced from the latter cause, no person of observation will hesitate to affirm; but Darwin is very unwilling to admit that it is the source of the honey-dew which he describes; and such a cause can never be assigned to that which appears in Carolina.

Darwin assures us that in Europe, the aphis is to be seen in its most perfect state, long before the honey-dew is produced, and continues some months after it has disappeared, and that the aphis frequently abounds much to the injury of trees, without the honey-dew being produced.

The product of the aphis is generally found on the upper surfaces of those leaves, on which it could have fallen from the lower surfaces of impending leaves, this part of the leaf being generally occupied by the aphis; but Darwin found the honey-dew dropping only from the upper surfaces of those leaves most superficial, and exposed to the sun, while those concealed had little or none of it. From observation, I can assert that the objection holds equally good in Carolina.

The aphis, from its ravages on fruit trees and garden plants, is an insect well known in Carolina; but its appearance in sufficient numbers, cotemporaneously with the production of the honey-dew, will never warrant the adoption of Sauvage's theory. But why should the labours of the aphis be influenced by the state of the atmosphere? Darwin confidently asserts, that the honey dew dis appeared on a change of the weather. Should it be replied, that the honey-dew found on the carbonated particles above mentioned, might have been wafted as it fell from tall trees, I would re. ply, that these trees must have been pine, from which no one will assert that the aphis could procure sap.

Dr. Darwin, after stating many plausible objections to the opi nion of the honey-dew being the product of the aphis, suggests the more probable and long-fostered theory of vegetable exudation. He ascribes it to a retrograde action of the lymphatics of plants, and fancifully compares it to diabetes mellitus; but as this inge nious speculatist himself doubts the validity of this explanation, I hope I shall not incur the imputation of presumption when I state a few objections.

He asserts, from observation, and on the authority of Duhamel, that those leaves on which much honey-dew is found, die in a short time. Death he ascribes to debility from excessive excitement, and to the quantity of fluid exuded. This fact has been long since remarked with regard to the honey-dew in Carolina, but, I think, admits of a more probable explanation. The upper surfaces of the leaves of a plant are supposed to constitute its organs of respiration; hence oil or varnish, spread on a leaf, will cause its death, for the same reason that a want of a due supply of atmospheric air is fatal to animal life. The honey-dew, on being desiccated by the heat of the sun, must resemble varnish, and would afford an equal obsta cle to vegetable respiration.

Darwin alleges the proximate cause of exudation to be the too great stimulus of heat; but informs us he saw it in the greatest quantities, and in the most fluid state, early in the morning, when, according to the known phenomena of life, excitement should be in the lowest degree.

It would be rational to conclude that were the honey-dew a ve getable production, it would more or less partake of the gene VOL. V. New Series.

8

Professor Barton has ingeniously ascribed the narcotic quality of honey, made in particular situations, to the vicinity of some species of kalmia and the datura stramonium. The exudation from the manna ash is a well-known purgative. The ocymum salinum is said to exude the common salt, and the nectarial honey of a particular species of bignonia has been more than once known to cause a temBut the honey-dew is porary suspension of the powers of vision. equally sweet and innocuous wherever it is found. This assertion I venture to make, from having lived near ponds where it was often found in great abundance, and where, from the gratification it af forded to my taste, many of the playful hours of my childhood have been spent in collecting it. The bee, the wasp, and the ant,' appeared to sip it, with equal avidity, from the astringent leaves of the styraciflua, the pungent and aromatic laurus, and the bitter cephalanthus.

ral properties of the plant from which it exudes.

Since, then, it would appear that the honey-dew originates neither in the labour of the aphis, nor in vegetable exudation, it remains to develop the true source. Towards the performance of this task I can do little more than hazard a few vague conjectures. I will proceed, however, to the statement of a natural process, coeval with the appearance of the honey-dew, not merely as a foundation on which the fanciful theorist may raise an aerial superstructure, but which appears, in the view of candid observation, to claim a connexion with the subject of this essay. The ponds and marshes near which this substance is produced abound with the cat's tail, nymphæ, grasses, and succulent plants. Vegetable life is not extinguished in these plants till late in autumn, or early in winter, when the stalks fall, and are covered with water, by which these ponds are overflowed until the succeeding spring. Hence putrefaction is at rest until the vernal or summer heats are sufficient to evaporate the waters of the ponds.

That putrefaction does not occur previous to this period I infer from two circumstances: 1st. That cattle late in winter and early in the spring are seen wading into the waters to collect these plants as food, and often are destroyed by drinking in the mud; 2dly. That the evaporation of ponds in the spring is succeeded by the usual effect of the miasmata of vegetable putrefaction.

If, then, the conjecture of Darwin be true, that the first stage. of vegetable decomposition is a saccharine process, (as in the conversion of barley into malt,) here is a source of the honey-dew, and also an explanation of the contiguity of this production to marshes and ponds. I do not insinuate that putrefaction furnishes a proper combination of the ingredients to the honey-dew, but a substance capable of evaporation, (as the nectarial honey of plants,) and which condensation might render more perfect. A fact which would seem to favour this opinion is, that bees are constantly seen on the mud, on putrefying vegetable masses, at the edges of ponds; and their flight from these places directs the bee hunters to their common repository. Nor should we be startled at the idea of sugar from such a putrefactive source, when chemistry leads us to expect from the same source other compounds far more complicated.

The opinion of the formation of honey from putrefaction, how. ever unphilosophical, is far from being novel. From holy writ we learn that Samson procured it from the carcass of a lion which he had slain; and Virgil tells us that Aristæus renovated his bees from the putrefying carcasses of oxen.

Whether, however, the opinion be false or true, I submit it, with due deference, to the judgment of the philosophic world.

A NATURALIST.

SPIRIT OF MAGAZINES, &c.

On the danger of confounding Moral with Personal Deformity; with a Hint to those who have the framing of Advertisements for apprehending Offenders.

MR. REFLECTOR,

[From the Reflector.]

THERE is no science in their pretensions to which mankind are more apt to commit grievous mistakes, than in the supposed very obvious one of physiognomy. I quarrel not with the principles of this science, as they are laid down by learned professors; much less am I disposed, with some people, to deny its existence altogether as any inlet of knowledge that can be depended upon. I believe that there is, or may be, an art to "read the mind's construction in the face." But, then, in every species of reading, so much depends upon the eyes of the reader; if they are blear, or apt to dazzle, or inattentive, or strained with too much attention, the optic power will infallibly bring home false reports of what it reads. How often do we say, upon a cursory glance at a stranger, what a fine open countenance he has, who, upon second inspection, proves to have the exact features of a knave. Nay, in mach more intimate acquaintances, how a delusion of this kind shall continue for months, years, and then break up all at once.

Ask the married man, who has been so but for a short space of time, if those blue eyes, where, during so many years of anxious courtship, truth, sweetness, serenity, seemed to be written in characters which could not be misunderstood-ask him if the characters which they now convey be exactly the same?-if for truth he does not read a dull virtue (the mimic of constancy) which changes not, only because it wants the judgment to make a preference?-if for sweetness he does not read a stupid habit of looking pleased at every thing?-if for serenity he does not read animal tranquillity, the dead-pool of the heart, which no breeze of passion can stir into health? Alas! what is this book of the countenance good for, which when we have read so long, and thought that we understood its contents, there comes a countless list of heartbreaking errata at the end!

But these are the pitiable mistakes to which love alone is subject. I have inadvertently wandered from my purpose, which