Mel. Honey. A saccharine secretion deposited in the honeycomb by the Apis mellifica. British and imported.

Description. It is a viscid fluid of a slight yellow colour; the purest is obtained by allowing the honey to flow from the comb; it has a peculiar heavy odour and very sweet taste.

Prop. & Comp. It consists chiefly of grape sugar, formula (C12 H14 O14. The sp. gr. is 1.34: it has an aromatic odour dependent in part on the flowers from which it is obtained. It is often adulterated with starch, and this adulteration is recognised by making a solution in hot water, and adding iodide of potassium with nitric acid; if no starch be present, no blue colour is pro-duced.

Off. Prep. Mel Depuratum. [Mel Despumatum. U. S.] Clari-fied Honey. (Prepared by melting the honey in a water bath, and straining while hot, through flannel previously moistened with warm water.)

Oxymel. Oxymel. (Clarified honey, forty ounces; acetic acid, five fluid ounces; distilled water, five fluid ounces.)

Clarified honey is also used in the preparation of Mel Boracis, Confectio Piperis, Confectio Scammonii, and Confectio Terebin-thinse.

Therapeutics. The action is much the same as sugar, but more laxative; it is generally used as a vehicle for other medicines.

Dose. Of honey, ad libitum; of oxymel, 1 fl. drm. to 1/2 fl. oz.

Cera Alba. White Wax. Yellow wax bleached by exposure to moisture and light.

Cera Flava. Yellow Wax. The prepared Honey-comb of Apis mellifica, The Hive Bee. British and imported.

Description. When the honey has been separated from the comb, the remaining portion melted constitutes yellow wax. This when bleached forms white wax. The yellow occurs in large irregular masses, firm, breaking with a granular fracture, with an agreeable honey-like odour; the white, in thin cakes, hard, white, and odourless. Neither yellow nor white wax is unctuous to the touch.

Prop. & Comp. Yellow wax does not melt under 140°, yields nothing to cold rectified spirit, but is entirely soluble in oil of turpentine; the white wax does not melt under 150°. Boiling water in which wax has been agitated, when cooled is not rendered blue by iodine.

Wax is separable by means of alcohol into three portions: my-ricine, almost insoluble in boiling alcohol; cerine, called also cerotic acid, soluble in boiling alcohol, but deposited when the liquid becomes cold; and ceroleine, which remains in solution in cold alcohol. These substances exist in different proportions in different specimens of wax. Myricine, by the action of potash, may be converted into palmitic acid, and a neutral substance, me-lissine; this substance, by oxidation, yields an acid, the melissic, which bears the same relation to melissine that acetic acid does to alcohol. In some varieties of wax a substance, cerotine, exists, which stands in the same position with regard to cerotic acid as melissine does to melissic acid.

Off. Prep. - Of White Wax. Unguentum Simplex. Simple Ointment. (White wax, two ounces; prepared lard, three ounces; almond oil, three fluid ounces.) [Ceratum Adipis. Cerate of Lard. Ceratum simplex. Pharm. 1850. Lard, eight ounces; white wax, four troy ounces. U. S.]

Yellow wax is contained in Unguentum Cantharidis, Unguen-tum Resinae, Unguentum Terebinthinge, and in some of the plasters, and white wax in Unguentum Plumbi Acetatis and Unguentum Sabinae.

Therapeutics. Demulcent, chiefly used in the preparations above-mentioned, to give them consistence.