EGGS OF APHIDES. 113 



Bonnet, however, whose opinion is entitled to con- 

 siderable authority, seems to think that the eg-gs of 

 aphides which are destined to survive the winter are 

 very different from other eggs ; and he supposes that 

 the insect, in a state nearly perfect, quits the body of 

 its mother in that covering; which shelters it from the 

 cold in winter, and that it is not, as other germs are 

 in the eg-g, surrounded by food, by means of which it 

 is developed and supported. It is nothing more, he 

 conjectures, than an asylum of which the aphides 

 appearing at another season have no need ; and it is 

 for this reason that some are produced naked, and 

 others enveloped in a covering. If this be correct, the 

 mothers are not then truly oviparous, even in autunm, 

 when they deposit these pseudoeggs; since their 

 young are almost as perfect as they ever will be, in 

 the asylum in which they are naturally placed at birth. 

 It was in vain that Bonnet endeavoured to preserve 

 eggs of this sort in his chamber till spring, in conse- 

 quence, he imagines, of the want of a certain degree of 

 moisture, which they would have had out of doors. We 

 have been more successful, through the precaution of 

 not taking the eggs from their native tree till Febru- 

 ary, and in 1830 we had a brood of several hundreds 

 produced of the oak aphis {Aphis Quercu.s) *. 



The failure on the jjart of Bonnet leads us to re- 

 mark, with the younger Huber, that ants are more 

 skilful in this respect than naturalists, and anxiously 

 nurse, during winter, the eggs of aphides, which they 

 collect with great care in the autumn. The interest- 

 ing narrative of the discovery of this we shall give in 

 Ruber's own words. 



" One day in November," says he, " anxious to 



know if the yellow ants {Formica Jiarci) began to 



bury themselves in their subterranean chambers, I 



destroyed, with care, one of iheir habitations, story by 



* J. R. 



