HYMENOPTERA. 347 
cuirasse, 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 either’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 the 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 recommence 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 isa 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 
more than president 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, per- 
haps ironical. ‘I must have’said something stupid,” repeated 
poor Daubenton between his teeth, remembering the saying of 
