HONE, William (1780-1842), a political satirist and a writer on antiquarian and miscellaneous subjects, was born at Bath, June 3, 1780. His father, a man of deep spiritual experience in that time of religious revival, brought up his children in strictness and reverence, but not without the sectarian narrowness that so frequently produces reaction. The parodist of the litany and of the Athânasian creed was taught to read from the Bible only. Hone received no systematic education. His father having removed to London in 1783, he was in 1790 placed in an attorney’s office. Becoming connected with the London Corresponding Society, which was given to freethought and to political agitation, he was removed by his father to the office of a solicitor at Chatham, but after two years and a half he returned to London and became clerk to a solicitor in Gray’s Inn. Having no liking for the study of the law, and apparently no hope of succeeding in it, Hone, being then married, started in 1800 a book and print shop and a circulating library in Lambeth Walk, and he soon after removed to St Martin’s Churchyard, where he brought out his first publication, Shaw’s Gardener, and suffered much loss from a fire. It was at this time that Hone matured and with a friend endeavoured to realize a plan for the establishment of popular savings banks, and even had an interview on the subject with the Right Hon. George Rose, then president of the Board of Trade. This scheme, however, fell through from lack of support. His partner in the savings bank became next his partner in a bookseller’s business; but Hone’s habits were not those of a tradesman, and bankruptcy was the result. After several removals, having compiled an index to Lord Berner’s translation of Froissart, he was in 1811 chosen by the booksellers as auctioneer to the trade, and had an office in Ivy Lane. Independent investigations carried on by him into the condition of lunatic asylums led again to difficulties and failure, but, struggling bravely under his burdens, he took a small lodging in the Old Bailey, and kept himself and his now large family by contributions to magazines and reviews. He hired a small shop (or rather box) in Fleet Street, but this was on two separate nights broken into, and valuable books lent for show were stolen. In 1815 he started the Traveller newspaper, and endeavoured vainly to exculpate Eliza Fenning, a poor girl, apparently quite guiltless, executed on a charge of poisoning. From February 1 to October 25, 1817, he published the liefen mist ’ s Register, writing in it as the serious critic of the state abuses, to which he soon after applied the lash of satire in those political squibs and parodies that made his name known throughout the land, and that first gave notoriety to George Cruikshank, who was his artistic collaborator. In April 1817 three ex officio informations were filed against him by the attorney-general, Sir William Garrow, and he was seized while reading in the street and hurried to the lock-up. Three separate trials took place in the Guildhall before special juries on the 18th, 19th, and 20th of December 1817. The first, for publishing Wilkes’s Catechism of a Ministerial Member, was before Mr Justice Abbot (afterwards Lord Tenterden); the second, for parodying the litany and libelling the prince regent, and the third, for publishing the Sinecurist's Creed, a parody on the Athanasian creed, were before Lord Ellenborough. The prosecuting officials, among whom we must include the judges, took the ground that the prints were calculated to injure public morals, and to bring the prayer-book and even religion itself into contempt. But there can be no doubt that the real motives of the prosecution were political; Hone had ridiculed the habits and exposed the corruption of the prince regent and of other persons in power. He went to the root of the matter when he wished the jury “to understand that, had he been a publisher of ministerial parodies, he would not then have been defending himself on the floor of that court.” In spite of illness and exhaustion Hone displayed great courage, ability, dignity, and presence of mind. On each of the three days he spoke on an average seven hours. Notwithstanding the powerful prosecution and the bias of the judges, he was acquitted on each count, and the result on each occasion was received with enthusiastic cheers by immense crowds within and without the court. Soon after the trials a public meeting, in which Aiderman Waithman, Sir F. Burdett, and Lord Cochrane took part, was held, and a subscription was begun, by which a large sum was soon collected to enable Hone to get over the difficulties caused by his prosecution.

Hone’s most successful political satires were published within a few years after his trial. Among them we may mention The Political House that Jack built, The Queen's Matrimonial Ladder (in favour of Queen Caroline), The Man in the Moon, The Political Showman, all illustrated by Cruikshank. Many of his squibs are directed against a certain “Dr Slop,” a nickname given by him to Dr (afterwards Sir John) Stoddart, a writer in the Times. In researches for his defence he had come upon some curious and at that time little trodden literary ground, and the results were shown by his publication in 1820 of his Apocryphal New Testament, and in 1823 of his Ancient Mysteries Explained. He proposed in 1820 to write a History of Parody, but this never appeared. In 1826 he published the Every-day Book, in 1827-8 the Table-Book, and in 1829 the Year-Book ∙, all three were collections of curious information on manners, antiquities, and various other subjects. These are the works by which Hone is best remembered. In preparing them he had the warm approval of Southey and the assistance of Charles Lamb, but pecuniarily they were not successful, and Hone was lodged in King’s Bench prison for debt. Friends, however, again came to his assistance, and he was established in a coffee-house in Gracechurch Street; but this again, like most of his enterprises, ended in failure. Hone’s attitude of mind had gradually changed to that of extreme devoutness, and during the latter years of his life he frequently preached in Weigh House Chapel, Eastcheap. In 1830 he edited Strutt’s Sports and Pastimes, and, on the starting in 1832 of the Penny Magazine, he contributed to the first number. He was also for some years sub-editor of the Patriot. He died at Tottenham, 8th November 1842.

It is a popular saying that where is the best honey there also is the best wool; and a pastoral district, since it affords a greater profusion of flowers, is superior for the production of honey to one under tillage. Dry warm weather is that most favourable to the secretion of nectar by flowers. This they protect from rain by various internal structures, such as papillae, cushions of hairs, and spurs, or by virtue of their position (in the raspberry, drooping), or the arrangement of their constituent parts. Dr A. W. Bennett {How Flowers are Fertilized, p. 31, 1873) has remarked that the perfume of flowers is generally derived from their nectar; the blossoms of some plants, however, as ivy and holly, though almost scentless, are highly nectariferous. The exudation of a honeylike or saccharine fluid, as has frequently been attested, is not a function exclusively of the flowers in all plants. A sweet material, the manna of pharmacy, e.g., is produced by the leaves and stems of a species of ash, Fraxinus Ornus ; and honey-secreting glands are to be met with on the leaves, petioles, phyllodes, stipules (as in Vicia sativa), or bracteae (as in the Marcgraviaceoe) of a considerable number of different vegetable forms. The origin of the honey-yielding properties manifested specially by flowers among the several parts of plants has been carefully considered by Darwin, who regards the saccharine matter in nectar as a waste product of chemical changes in the sap, which, when it happened to be excreted within the envelopes of flowers, was utilized for the important object of cross-fertilization, and sub sequently was much increased in quantity, and stored in various ways (see Cross and Self Fertilization of Plants, p, 402 sq., 1876). It has been noted with respect to the nectar of the fuchsia that it is most abundant when the anthers are about to dehisce, and absent in the unexpanded flower.

Pettigrew is of opinion that few bees go more than two miles from home in search of honey. The number of blossoms visited in order to meet the requirements of a single hive of bees must be very great; for it has been found by A. S. Wilson (“On the Nectar of Flowers,” Bnt. Assoc. Rep., 1878, p. 567) that 125 heads of common red clover, which is a plant comparatively abundant in nectar, yield but one gramme (15 - 432 grains) of sugar; and as each head contains about 60 florets, 7,500,000 distinct flower-tubes must on this estimate be exhausted for each kilogramme (2 ’204 lb) of sugar collected. Among the richer sources of honey are reckoned the apple, asparagus, asters, barberry, basswood (TUiα americana), and the European lime or linden (T. eurορcea), beans, bonesets (Bupatοrium), borage, broom, buckwheat, catnip, or catmint (Nepeta Cataria), cherry, cleome, clover, cotton, crocus, currant, dandelion, eucalyptus, figwort (Scrophularia), furze, golden-rod (Solidago), gooseberry, hawthorn, heather, hepatica, horehound, hyacinth, lucerne, maple, mignonette, mint, motherwort (Beonurus), mustard, onion, peach, pear, poplar, quince, rape, raspberry, sage, silver maple, snapdragon, sour-wood (Oxydendron arboreum, D.C.), strawberry, sycamore, teasel, thyme, tulip-tree (more especially rich in pollen), turnip, violet, and willows, and the “honey-dew” of the leaves of the whitethorn. (Bonner), oak, linden, beech, and some other trees.

Honey contains dextroglucose and laevoglucose (the former practically insoluble, the latter soluble in ⅜ pt. of cold strong alcohol), cane-sugar (according to some), mucilage, water, wax, essential oil, colouring bodies, a minute quantity of mineral matter, and pollen. By a species of fermentation, the cane-sugar is said to be gradually transformed into inverted sugar (laevoglucose with dextroglucose). The pollen, as a source of nitrogen, is of importance to the bees feeding on the honey. It may be obtained for examination as a sediment from a mixture of honey and water. Other substances which have been discovered in honey are mannite (Guibourt), a free acid which precipitates the salts of silver and of lead, and is soluble in water and alcohol (.Calloux), and an uncrystallizable sugar, nearly related to inverted sugar (Soubeiran, Compt. Rend., xxviii. 774-75, 1849). Brittany honey contains couvain, a ferment which determines its active decomposition (Wurtz, Diet, de Chem., ii. 430). In the honey of Polybia apicipenηis, a wasp of tropical America, cane-sugar occurs in crystals of large size (Karsten, Pogg. Ann., C. 550). Dr J. Campbell Brown (“On the Composition of Honey,” Analyst, iii. 267, 1878) is doubtful as to the presence of cane-sugar in any one of nine samples, from various sources, examined by him. The following average percentage numbers are afforded by his analyses :—laevulose, 36 ’ 45; dextrose, 36 - 57; mineral matter, ’ 15; water expelled at 100° C., 18 - 5, and at a much higher temperature, with loss, 7 ’ 81: the wax, pollen, and insoluble matter vary from a trace to 2 1 per cent. The specific gravity of honey is about 1 ’ 41. The rotation of a polarized ray by a solution of 16 ’ 26 grammes of crude honey in 100 c.c. of water is generally from — 3 , 2° to — 5° at 60° F.; in the case of Greek honey it is nearly — 5 ’ 5°. Almost all pure honey, when exposed for some time to light and cold, becomes more or less granular in consistency. Any liquid portion can be readily separated by straining through linen. Honey sold out of the comb is commonly clarified by heating and skimming; but according to Bonner it is always best in its natural state. The mel depuratum of British pharmacy is prepared by heating honey in a water-bath, and straining through flannel previously moistened with warm water.

The term “virgin-honey” (A.-S., huwigtear) is applied to the honey of young bees which have never swarmed, or to that which flows spontaneously from honeycomb with or without the application of heat. The honey obtained from old hives, considered inferior to it in quality, is ordinarily darker, thicker, and less pleasant in taste and odour. The yield of honey is less in proportion to weight in old than in young or virgin combs. The far-famed honey of Narbonne is white, very granular, and highly aromatic; and still finer honey is that procured from the Corbières mountains, 6 to 9 miles to the south-west. The honey of Gâtinais is usually white, and is less odorous, and granulates less readily than that of Narbonne. Honey from white clover has a greenish-white, and that from heather a rich golden-yellow hue. What is made from honey-dew is dark in colour, and disagreeable to the palate, and does not candy like good honey. “We have seen aphide honey from sycamores,” says F. Cheshire (Pract. Bee-Keeping, p. 7 4), “as deep in tone as walnut liquor, and where much of it is stored the value of the whole crop is practically nil." The honey of the stingless bees (Melipoηa and Trigona) of Brazil varies greatly in quality according to the species of flowers from which it is collected, some kinds being black and sour, and others excellent (F. Smith, Trans. Ent. Soc., 3d ser., i. pt. vi., 1863). That of Apis Peronii, of India and Timor, is yellow, and of very agreeable flavour, and is more liquid than the British sorts. A. unicolor, a bee indigenous to Madagascar, and naturalized in Mauritius and the island of Réunion, furnishes a thick and syrupy, peculiarly scented green honey, highly esteemed in Western India. A rose-coloured honey is stated (Gard. Chron., 1870, p. 1698) to have been procured by artificial feeding. The fine aroma of Maltese honey is due to its collection from orange blossoms, Narbonne honey being harvested chiefly from Labiate plants, as rosemary, an imitation of it is sometimes prepared by flavouring ordinary honey with infusion of rosemary flowers.

Adulterations of honey are starch, detectable by the microscope, and by its blue reaction with iodine, also wheaten flour, gelatin, chalk, gypsum, pipe-clay, added water, cane-sugar, and common syrup, and the different varieties of manufactured glucose. Honey sophisticated with glucose containing copperas as an impurity is turned of an inky colour by liquids containing tannin, as tea. Elm leaves have been used in America for the flavouring of imitation honey. Stone jars should be employedin preference to common earthenware for the storage of honey, which acts upon the lead glaze of the latter.

Honey is mildly laxative in properties. Some few kinds are poisonous, as frequently the reddish honey stored by the Brazilian wasp Nectarina (Polistes, Latr.) Lecheguaηa, Shuck., the effects of which have been vividly described by Aug. de Saint-Hilaire, the spring honey of the wild bees of East Nepaul, said to be rendered noxious by collection from rhododendron flowers (Hooker, Himalayan Journals, i. 190, ed. 1855), and the honey of Trebizond, which from its source, the blossoms, it is stated, of Azalea pontica and Rhododendron ponticum (perhaps to be identified with Pliny’s Aegolethroii), acquires the qualities of an irritant and intoxicant narcotic, as described by Xenophon (Anab., iv. 8). Pliny (Nat. Hist., xxi. 45) describes as noxious a livid-coloured honey found in Persia and Gaetulia. Honey obtained from Kalmia latifolia, L., the calico bush, mountain laurel, or spoon-wood of the northern United States, and allied species, is reputed deleterious; also that of the sour-wood is by some good authorities considered to possess undeniable griping properties; and G. Bidie (Madras Quart. Journ. Med. Sci., Oct. 1861, p. 399) mentions urtication, headache, extreme prostration and nausea, and intense thirst among the symptoms produced by a small quantity only of a honey from Coorg jungle. A South African species of Euphorbia, as was experienced by the missionary Moffat (Miss. Lab.,p. 32, 1846), yields a poisonous honey.

The nectar of certain flowers is asserted to cause even in bees a fatal kind of vertigo. As a demulcent and flavouring agent, honey is employed in the oxymel, oxymel scillae, mel boracis, confectio piperis, conf scammonii, and conf, terebinthinae of the British Pharmacopoeia. To the ancients honey was of very great importance as an article of diet, being almost their only available source of sugar. It was valued by them also for its medicinal virtues; and in recipes of the Saxon and later periods it is a common ingredient. Of the eight kinds of honey mentioned by the great Indian surgical writer Susruta, four are not described by recent authors, viz., argha, or wild honey, collected by a sort of yellow bee; ehhatra, made by tawny or yellow wasps; audalaka, a bitter and acrid honey-like substance found in the nest of white ants; and dâla, or unprepared honey occurring on flowers. According to Hindu medical writers, honey when new is laxative, and when more than a year old astringent (U. C. Dutt, Mat. Med. of the Hindus, p. 277, 1877). Ceromel, formed by mixing at a gentle heat one part by weight of yellow wax with four of clarified honey, and straining, is used in India and other tropical countries as a mild stimulant for ulcers in the place of animal fats, which there rapidly become rancid and unfit for medicinal purposes. The Koran, in the chapter entitled “The Bee,” remarks with reference to bees and their honey: “There proceedeth from their bellies a liquor of various colour, wherein is a medicine for men” (Sale’s Koran, chap, xvi.). Pills prepared with honey as an excipient are said to remain unindurated, however long they may be kept (Med. Times, 1857, i. 269). Mead, of yore a favourite beverage in England (vol. iv. p. 264), is made by fermentation of the liquor obtained by boiling in water combs from which the honey has been drained. In the preparation of sack-mead, an ounce of hops is added to each gallon of the liquor, and after the fermentation a small quantity of brandy. Metheglin, or hydromel, is manufactured by fermenting with yeast a solution of honey flavoured with boiled hops (see Cooley, Cyclop.'). A kind of mead is largely consumed in Abyssinia (vol. i. p. 64), where it is carried on journeys in large horns (Stern, Wanderings, p. 317, 1862). In Russia a drink termed liρetz is made from the delicious honey of the linden. The mulsum of the ancient Romans consisted of honey, wine, and water boiled together. The clarre, or piment, of Chaucer’s time was wine mixed with honey and spices, and strained till clear; a similar drink was bracket, made with wort of ale instead of wine. L. Maurial (L ’ Insectologie Agricole for 1868, p. 206) reports unfavourably as to the use of honey for the production of alcohol; he recommends it, however, as superior to sugar for the thickening of liqueurs, and also as a means of sweetening imperfectly ripened vintages. It is occasionally employed for giving strength and flavour to ale. In ancient Egypt it was valued as an embalming material; and in the East, for the preservation of fruit, and the making of cakes, sweatmeats, and other articles of food, it is largely consumed. Grafts, seeds, and birds’ eggs, for transmission to great distances, are sometimes packed in honey. In India a mixture of honey and milk, or of equal parts of curds, honey, and clarified butter (Sansk., madhu-parka), is a respectful offering to a guest, or to a bridegroom on his arrival at the door of the bride’s father; and one of the purificatory ceremonies of the Hindus (Sansk., madhu-ρrasana) is the placing of a little honey in the mouth of a new-born male infant. Honey is frequently alluded to by the writers of antiquity as food for children; it is not to this, however, as already mentioned, that Isa. vii. 15 refers. Cream or fresh butter together with honey, and with or without bread, is a favourite dish with the Arabs.

Among the observances at the Fandrbana, or New Year’s Festival, in Madagascar, is the eating of mingled rice and honey by the queen and her guests; in the same country honey is placed in the sacred water of sprinkling used at the blessing of the children previous to circumcision (Sibree, The Great African Is., pp. 219, 314, 1880). Honey was frequently employed in the ancient religious ceremonies of the heathen, but was forbidden as a sacrifice in the Jewish ritual (Lev. ii. 11). With milk or water it was presented by the Greeks as a libation to the dead (Odyss., xi. 27; Eurip., Orest., 115). A honey-cake was the monthly food of the fabled serpent-guardian of the Acropolis (Herod., viii. 41). By the aborigines of Peru honey was offered to the sun.

The Hebrew word translated “honey” in the authorized version of the English Bible is dcbαsh, practically synonymous with which are jdar or jdarith had-dcbash (1 Sam. xix. 25-27; cf. Cant, v. 1) and nopheth (Ps. xix. 10, &c.), rendered “honey-comb.” Debash denotes bee-honey (as in Dent, xxxii. 13, and Jud. xiv. 8); the manna of trees, by some writers considered to have been the “wild honey” eaten by John the Baptist (Matt. iii. 4); the syrup of dates or the fruits themselves; and probably in some passages (as Gen. xliii. 11 and Ez. xxvii. 17) the syrupy boiled juice of the grape, resembling thin molasses, in use in Palestine, especially at Hebron, under the name of. dibs (see Kitto, Cyclop., and E. Robinson, Bibl. Res., ii. 81). Josephus (B. J., iv. 8, 3) speaks highly of a honey produced at Jericho, consisting of the expressed juice of the fruit of palm trees; and Herodotus (iv. 194) mentions a similar preparation made by the Gyzantians in North Africa, where it is still in use. The honey most esteemed by the ancients was that of Mount Hybla in Sicily, and of Mount Hymettus in Attica (vol. iii. p. 59). Mahaffy {Rambles in Greece, p. 148, 2d ed., 1878) describes the honey of Hymettus as by no means so good as the produce of other parts of Greece—not to say of the heather hills of Scotland and Ireland. That of Thebes, and more especially that of Corinth, which is made in the thymy hills towards Cleonae, he found much better (c∕. vol. xi. p. 88). Honey and wax, still largely obtained in Corsica (vol. vi. p. 440), were in olden times the chief productions of the island. In England, in the 13th and 14th centuries, honey sold at from about 7d. to Is. 2d. a gallon, and occasionally was disposed of by the swarm or hive, or ruscha (Rogers, Hist, of Agric. and Prices in Eng., i. 418). At Wrexham, Denbigh, Wales, two honey fairs are annually held, the one on the Thursday next after the 1st September, and the other, the more recently instituted and by far the larger, on the Thursday following the first Wednesday in October. In Hungary the amounts of honey and of wax are in favourable years respectively about 190,000 and 12,000 cwt., and in unfavourable years, as, e.g., 1874, about 12,000 and 3000 cwt. The hives there in 1870 numbered 617,407 (or 40 per 1000 of the population, against 45 in Austria). Of these 365,711 were in Hungary Proper, and 91,348 (87 per 1000 persons) in the Military Frontier (Keleti, Uebersicht der Bevölk. Ungarns, 1871; Schwicker, Statistik d. K. Ungarn, 1877). In Poland the system of bee-keeping introduced by Dolinowski has been found to afford an average of 40 tt> of honey and wax and two new swarms per hive, the common peasant’s hive yielding, with two swarms, only 3 lb of honey and wax. In forests and places remote from villages in Podolia and parts of Volhynia, as many as 1000 hives may be seen in one apiary. In the district of Ostrolenka, in the government of Plock, and in the woody region of Polesia, in Lithuania, a method is practised of rearin" bees in excavated trunks of trees (Stanton, “On the Treatment of Bees in Poland,” Technologist, vi. 45, 1866). When, in August, in the loftier valleys of Bormio, Italy, flowering ceases, the bee ι in their wooden hives are by means of spring-carts transported at night to lower regions, where they obtain from the buckλvheat crops the inferior honey which serves them for winter consumption {Ib., p. 38).

In Palestine, “the land flowing with milk and honey” (Ex. iii. 17; Numb, xiii. 27), wild bees are very numerous, especially in the wilderness of Judaea, and the selling of their produce, obtained from crevices in rocks, hollows in trees, and elsewhere, is with many of the inhabitants a means of subsistence. Commenting on 1 Sam. xiv. 26, J. Roberts (Oriental Illust. )remarks that in the East “the forests literally flow with honey; large combs may be seen hanging on the trees, as you pass along, full of honey.” In Galilee, and at Bethlehem and other places in Palestine, bee-keeping is extensively carried on. The hives are sun-burnt tubes of mud, about 4 feet in length and 8 inches in diameter, and, with the exception of a small central aperture for the passage of the bees, closed at each...