£09
long before the usual time, with the view of giving room to thebees to continue their work, so favourable is the harvest somesummers.
The bee-gardens are chosen in the plains where the perennialplants are most abundant, that the bee may have but little wayto carry home the produce of her labour ; they are of a circularform, about ISO yards in diameter, enclosed with a fence ofreeds, or brush-wood, and a thatching over them of about fivefeet for protection, and to keep out the rain and snow : this issupported by poles from the inside, and a bank of earth is alsothrown up, to keep out the snow from penetrating in the winter.In the middle a few fruit-trees are planted to break the wind, asalso hawthorns, and other underwood, round the enclosure, withthe same view. The hives are planted under cover, in the in-side, round the fence ; and in the winter they are well securedwith straw from the frost. The plants for which the bees havea preference, are the Thymus serpyllum, Hyssopus officinalis,Cerinthe maculata, and the Pollygonum fagopyrum.
The process of brewing mead in Poland is very simple: theproportion is three parts of water to one of honey, and 50 lib. ofmild hops to 160 gallons, which is called a Waar, or a brewing.When the water is boiling, both the honey and hops are throwninto it, and it is kept stirring until it becomes milk warm ; it isthen put into a large cask, and allowed to ferment for a fewdays ; it is then drawn off into another cask, wherein there hasbeen aqua-vita or whisky, bunged quite close, and afterwardstaken to the cellar, which in this country are excellent and cool.This mead becomes good in three years time; and by keeping,it improves like many sorts of wine. The mead for immediatedrink is made from malt, hops, and honey, in the same propor-tion, and undergoes a similar process. In Hungary it is usual toput ginger in mead. There are other sorts of mead in Poland ,as Wisniak, Dereniak, Maliniak ; they are made of honey, wildcherries, berries of the Cornus mascuia, and raspberries ; theyall undergo the same process, and are most excellent and whole-some after a few years keeping. I never saw a gouty man inthose provinces where mead is in common use. The Lipiec ismade in the same way; but it contains the honey and pure wa-ter only. The honey gathered by the bees from the Azaleapontica, at Oczakow, and in Potesia in Poland , is of an intoxicat-ing nature ; it produces nausea, and is used only for medicalpurposes, chiefly in rheumatism, scrophula, and eruption of theskin, in which complaints it has been attended with great suc-cess. In a disease among the hogs called Wengry (a sort ofplague among these animals), a decoction of the leaves and budsof this plant is given, with the greatest effect, and produces al-most instantaneous relief. This disease attacks the hogs with a