Page:Bee-Culture Hopkins 2nd ed revised Dec 1907.pdf/51

 taking with it the fee or reward provided by nature for that special service.

There are, however, occasions when considerable quantities of such matter are thrown off or exuded by the leaves, which effect is taken to indicate an abnormal or unhealthy condition of the plant. At pages 106 and 107 of Liebig's book (speaking of an experiment made to induce the rising sap of a maple-tree to dissolve raw sugar applied through a hole cut in the bark) he shows that,-—

When a sufficient quantity of nitrogen is not present to aid in the assimilation of the substances destitute of it, these substances will be separated as excrements from the bark, roots, leaves, and branches.

In a note to this last paragraph we are told that—

Langlois has lately observed, during the dry summer of 1842, that the leaves of the linden-tree became covered with a thick and sweet liquid in such quantities that for several hours of the day it ran off the leaves like drops of rain. Many kilograms might have been collected from a moderate-sized linden-tree.

And further on, at page 141, he says,—

In a hot summer, when the deficiency of moisture prevents the absorption of alkalies, we observe the leaves of the lime-tree, and of other trees, covered with a thick liquid containing a large quantity of sugar; the carbon of the sugar must, without doubt, be obtained from the carbonic acid of the air. The generation of the sugar takes place in the leaves, and all the constituents of the leaves, including the alkalies and alkaline earths, must participate in effecting its formation. Sugar does not exude from the leaves in moist seasons, and this leads us to conjecture that the carbon which appeared as sugar in the former case would have been applied in the formation of other constituents of the tree in the event of its having had a free and unimpeded circulation.

These quotations will probably be considered sufficient to justify the assertion that the gathering of the honey from plants can in no possible way tend to exhaust the soil or affect its fertility. There is no difference of opinion among scientific men as to the sources from which the saccharine matter of plants is derived. Since Liebig first put forward his views on that subject, as well as with regard to the sources from which the plants derive their nitrogen, the principles of agricultural chemistry have been studied by the most eminent chemists, some of whom combated the views of Liebig on this latter point (the source of nitrogen and its compounds), and Liebig himself seems to have modified his views on that point; but there has been no difference of opinion about the saccharine matter, as to which Liebig's doctrine will be found given unaltered in the latest colonial work on the subject, MacIvor's ‘‘Chemistry of Agriculture ’’, published at Melbourne a few years ago.