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To Test the Purity of Honey

agent but sunshine is employed, part of its Honey is frequently adulterated with molasses, properties will be destroyed, and it is genuine potato-sugar syrup, starch, wheat flower, and wax no longer. Chlorine will whiten, but at water. The molasses may be detected by the same time greatly injure it. The chlorine the color and odor; the potato-sugar syrup, is retained, and forms, on combustion, muriatic by boiling a sample of the honey for a short acid. time in water containing 2 or 3 per cent. of 1580. French Method of Bleaching caustic potassa; if the liquid remains color- Bees' Wax. The wax is melted in copper less it is pure; but if it turns brown, more or vessels, and, after complete liquefaction, is less, it is adulterated according to the quan- agitated with 8 ounces of pulverized cream of tity of syrup present. The starch, by the honey tartar for each 100 pounds. After some not forming a nearly clear solution with cold minutes' agitation it is allowed to deposit its water, and striking a blue color with iodine. impurities, and is drawn into a wooden vessel When it contains wheat flour and is heated, and allowed to deposit a further amount of it at first liquefies, but on cooling it becomes solid and tough. Water is added to honey to increase its bulk. Its presence may be suspected from the greater thinness of the liquid. foreign substance-dirt, sand, bees, etc. and, while still liquid, is drawn upon a little roller partly immersed in water, to which a regular rotation is given-thus producing thin sheets or ribbons of wax, which may be detached from the roller, being now ready for the precess of bleaching. This is accomplished by the exposure of the yellow scales and ribbons, Bees' Wax. The substance which upon cloths, to the direct rays of the sun and forms the cells of bees; obtained by the dew, for several days, during which time kheiting the comb in water after the honey the wax completely loses its color. It is, has been removed, straining the liquid mass, however, in practice impossible to bleach the remelting the defecated portion, and casting wax at a single operation, as the effect takes into cakes. Bees' wax, when pure, has neither place only on the surface, and, as the ribbons taste nor smell; it melts at about 157° Fahr., have a certain thickness, it is necessary to and is of a specific gravity of .966. It burns melt them anew, and having repeated the without smoke or disagreeable odor. It is in- operation of granulating, it is submitted to a soluble in water, but soluble in all proportions second exposure. The wax thus bleached is in the fixed and volatile oils, bisulphide of car- melted, and cast into discs of 1 to 2 ounces bon, and benzine. Its complete solution in weight, and forms the cera alba of the Pharthese substances demonstrates its freedom from fecula, sulphur, sawdust, or bone dust, which have been found in the wax of commerce, sometimes amounting to 60 per cent. of the whole weight. The abundance and low macopœia. 1581. Italian Method of Bleaching Bees' Wax. The yellow wax is first melted in a kettle, and then is dipped out into a long tin vessel that will hold 2 or 3 gallons, and BEES' WAX. which has row of small holes, about the diameter of a knitting-needle, in the bottom.

This vessel is fixed over a cylinder of wood 2 feet in length and 15 inches in diameter, which is made to revolve like a grindstone, in one end of a trough of water 24 feet in width, 10 to 15 feet in length, and 1 foot in depth.

As the melted wax falls in small streams on this wet revolving cylinder, it flattens out into a thin ribbon and floats off toward the other end of the trough of water. It is then dipped out with a skimmer (that may be made of osier twigs), spread on a table (with a top made of small willow rods, covered with a clean white cloth), and then exposed in this way to the sun until bleached.