dish towns there are one hundred or two hundred hives of them,
although the said hives are not so huge as those of the east country, but
far less, and not able to contain above one bushel of corn or five pecks
at the most. Pliny (a man that of set purpose delighteth to write of
wonders), speaking of honey, noteth that in the north regions the hives in
his time were of such quantity that some one comb contained eight foot in
length, and yet (as it should seem) he speaketh not of the greatest. For
in Podolia, which is now subject to the King of Poland, their hives are so
great, and combs so abundant, that huge boars, overturning and falling
into them, are drowned in the honey before they can recover and find the
means to come out.

Our honey also is taken and reputed to be the best, because it is harder,
better wrought, and cleanlier vesselled up, than that which cometh from
beyond the sea, where they stamp and strain their combs, bees, and young
blowings altogether into the stuff, as I have been informed. In use also
of medicine our physicians and apothecaries eschew the foreign, especially
that of Spain and Pontus, by reason of a venomous quality naturally
planted in the same, as some write, and choose the home-made: not only by
reason of our soil (which hath no less plenty of wild thyme growing
therein than in Sicilia and about Athens, and maketh the best stuff) as
also for that it breedeth (being gotten in harvest time) less choler, and
which is oftentimes (as I have seen by experience) so white as sugar, and
corned as if it were salt. Our hives are made commonly of rye straw and
wattled about with bramble quarters; but some make the same of wicker, and
cast them over with clay. We cherish none in trees, but set our hives
somewhere on the warmest side of the house, providing that they may stand
dry and without danger both of the mouse and the moth. This furthermore is
to be noted, that whereas in vessels of oil that which is nearest the top
is counted the finest and of wine that in the middest, so of honey the
best which is heaviest and moistest is always next the bottom, and
evermore casteth and driveth his dregs upward toward the very top,
contrary to the nature of other liquid substances, whose grounds and leeze
do generally settle downwards. And thus much as by the way of our bees and
English honey.

As for the whole-bodied, as the _cantharides_, and such venomous creatures
of the same kind, to be abundantly found