206 AFFECTION OF INSECTS FOR THEIR YOUNG. 



One circumstance must be premised with regard to the education of the 

 young of most of those insects which live in society, truly extraordinary, 

 and without parallel in any other department of nature ; namely, that this 

 office, except under particular circumstances, is not undertaken by the 

 female which has given birth to them, but by the workers, or neuters, as 

 they are sometimes called, which, though bound to the offspring of the 

 common mother of the society by no other than fraternal ties, exhibit to- 

 wards them all the marks of the most ardent parental affection, building 

 habitations for their use, feeding them, and tending them with incessant 

 solicitude, and willingly sacrificing their lives in defence of the precious 

 charge. Thus sterility itself is made an instrument of the preservation and 

 multiplication of species ; and females too fruitful to educate all their 

 young are indulged by Providence with a privilege without which nine 

 tenths of their progeny must perish. 



The most determined despiser of insects and their concerns — he who 

 never deigned to open his eyes to any other part of their economy — must 

 yet have observed, even in spite of himself, the remarkable attachment 

 which the inhabitants of a disturbed nest of ants manifest towards certain 

 small white oblong bodies with Vv'hich it is usually stored. He must have 

 perceived that the ants are much less intently occupied with providing for 

 their own safety, than in carrying off these little bodies to a place of 

 security. To effect this purpose the whole community is in motion, and 

 no danger can divert them from attempting its accomplishment. An 

 observer having cut an ant in two, the poor mutilated animal did not relax 

 in its affectionate exertions. With that half of the body to which the head 

 remained attached it contrived previously to expiring to carry off ten of 

 these white masses into the interior of the nest ! You will readily divine 

 that these attractive objects are the young of the ants in one of the first 

 or imperfect states. They are, in fact, not the eggs, as they are vulgarly 

 called, but the pupae, which the working ants. tend with the most patient 

 assiduity. But I must give you a more detailed account of their opera- 

 tions, beginning with the actual eggs. 



These, which are so small as to be scarcely visible to the naked eye, as 

 soon as deposited by the queen ant, who drops them at random in her 

 progress through the nest, are taken charge of by the workers, who im- 

 mediately seize them and carry them in their mouths, in small parcels, 

 incessantly turning them backwards and forwards with their tongue for the 

 purpose of moistening them, without which they would come to nothing. 

 They then lay them in heaps, which they place in separate apartments', 

 and constantly tend until hatched into larvae ; frequently in the course of 

 the day removing them from one quarter of the nest to another, as they 

 require a warmer or cooler, a moister or drier atmosphere ; and at intervals 

 brooding over them as if to impart a genial warmth.^ Experiments have 

 l)cen made to ascertain whether these assiduous nurses could distinguish 

 their eggs if intermixed with particles of salt and sugar, which, to an ordi- 

 nary observer, they very much resemble ; but the result was constantly 

 in favour of the sagacity of the ants. They invariably selected the eggs 

 from whatever materials they were mixed with, and re-arranged them as 

 before.^ 



» Huber, C9. « De Geer, ii. 1099. 6 Gould, 37. 



