HYMENOPTERA. 345 



gladiators used formerly to do in the circus. They are continually 

 making stabs with their stings, but almost always the point slips over 

 the scales with which they are covered. The combat is sometimes 

 prolonged during an hour, before one of them has found the weak 

 point in the other's natural cuirass, and has buried its terrible 

 weapon in the flesh. The victor often leaves its sting in the wound 

 which it has made, and then dies, in its moment of triumph, through 

 the loss of this organ. Sometimes the two combatants, in spite of 

 long and savage assaults, cannot succeed in injuring cither's solid 

 armour. In such a case they leave each other, tired of war, and fly 

 away, despairing of obtaining a victory. 



At the end of autumn, when the bees no longer find any flowers in 

 the fields to plunder, they finish rearing their eggs on the pollen, 

 which they keep in store, and the queen ceases to lay. Numbed by 

 the cold of the winter, the workers cease to go out. Crowded 

 together they mutually warm each other, and thus hold out, when the 

 cold is not too intense, against the rigour of the frosts. Huddled 

 up between the cakes of the honeycomb, they wait for the return 

 of fine weather, to re-commence their labours at home and abroad. 

 After two or three years of this laborious existence the bee dies, but 

 to live again in a numerous posterity, as Virgil says : 



" At genus immortale manet, multosque per annos 

 Stat fortuna domus, et avi numerantur avorum ! " 



There has been a good deal of discussion on the question whether 

 bees constitute monarchies or republics. According to our opinion, 

 theirs is a true republic. As all the population is the issue of a 

 common mother, and as each bee of the female sex can become a 

 queen that is to say, a mother-bee, if it receives an appropriate 

 nourishment it is manifest that the title of queen has been wrongly 

 given to the mother-bee. After all, she is nothing mofe than presi- 

 dent of a republic. The vice-presidents, as we have already pointed 

 out, are all those females which at .any given moment may be called 

 by choice that is, by popular election to fulfil the functions of the 

 sovereign, when death or accident has put an end to her existence. 

 " There is no such thing as a king in Nature," said Daubenton one 

 day, in one of his lectures at the Jardin des Plantes. The audience 

 immediately applauded, and cried "Bravo!" The honest savant 

 stopped, quite disconcerted, and asked his assistant naturalist the 

 cause of this applause, perhaps ironical. " I must have said some- 

 thing stupid," repeated poor Daubenton between his teeth, remem- 

 bering the saying of Phocion under similar circumstances. " No," 



