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 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, perhaps ironical. "I must have said something stupid," repeated poor Daubenton between his teeth, remembering the saying of Phocion under similar circumstances. "No," replied his assistant naturalist, "you have said nothing but what is quite true; but, without meaning it, you have made a political allusion. You spoke against kings, and our young republicans thought that you were alluding to Louis XVI." "Indeed," said the coadjutor of Buffon, "I had no idea that I was talking politics!" The bee republic, this little animal society, is admirably constituted, and all its citizens obey its laws with docility. Bees have often served as an example, proving, according to some, the marvellous intelligence of certain little animals; according to others, an insect wonderfully developed. For ourselves, we have never well understood what people mean by the word _instinct_; and we frankly grant to the bee intelligence, as we do also to many animals. The greater number of the acts of their life seem to be the result of an idea, a mental deliberation, a determination come to after examination and reflection. The construction of their cells, always uniform, is, they say, the result of instinct. However, it happens that under particular circumstances, these little architects know how to abandon the beaten track of routine, reserving to themselves the power of returning, when it is useful to do so, to the traditional principles which ensure the beauty and regularity of their constructions. Bees have been seen, indeed, to deviate from their ordinary habits in order to correct certain irregularities--the result of accident or produced by the intervention of man--which had deranged their works.