e 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 in other countries,
we hear not of them: yet have we beetles, horseflies, turdbugs or dors
(called in Latin _scarabei_), the locust or the grasshopper (which to
me do seem to be one thing, as I will anon declare), and such like,
whereof let other intreat that make an exercise in catching of flies,
but a far greater sport