IN REPUBLICS. 363 
which their impregnation is accompa- 
nied. 
The mystery of the fecundation of the 
queen bee, has, from time immemorial, 
excited the attention of naturalists; it 
has, therefore, been the subject of the 
most profound researches; their re- 
spective authors passing from error to 
error, from conjecture to conjecture, 
came to doubt of the queen’s having 
sexual intercourse with the male. It was 
reserved for a mind eminently endowed. 
with all those qualities which constitute 
the philosopher and naturalist, that pe- 
netration, that logic, that extension of 
thought, so uncommon, of interrogating 
nature by the organ of another *, of, 
at length, decyphering those lines of 
* I rather think the author here alludes to the 
distressing state of his father, who has, for many 
years, laboured under the greatest of bodily pri- 
vations — loss of sight. His ardour in the investi- 
gation of his favourite subject, suffered no diminu- 
tion. A faithful domestic attended, and gave him 
information of what was passing in the interior of 
his glass-hives. — T. 
R 2 
