204 TRANSFORMATIONS OF INSECTS. 



two nests encroach upon each other, they fight in miHtary array, 

 and with great skill. 



It is very interesting to watch the workers in their almost 

 incessant nursing of the larvae. They clean them by rubbing 

 them with their palpi, they carry them in the early morning 

 up into the higher stories of the nest, so that they may be 

 warmer, and they bring them back again into the depths of the 

 cells when the sun becomes too hot for these frail little creatures. 

 It is very wonderful how the worker ants manage to carry these 

 very soft larvai in their very sharp mandibles, but accidents 

 never happen, and such a thing is unknown as a wound pro- 

 duced by unusual pressure, or by tumbling up against the walls 

 of the long corridors and chambers of the nest. When the larv?e 

 become full grown they spin a silky cocoon in order that they 

 may undergo their metamorphosis in it. The cocoons are oval 

 in shape, and indeed so much so that they are usually called 

 ant's eggs ; and it is certainly curious that a great number of 

 intelligent and highly educated people believe that ants lay 

 eggs much larger than themselves. In fact, it docs not strike 

 them as being at all wonderful. Does not nearly every one talk 

 about the ant's eggs, which are collected to feed young phea- 

 sants } but these so-called eggs are really cocoons manufactured 

 by larvae, and which contain them or nymphs. The nymphs arc 

 perfectly enclosed in their silky cocoons ; they are white, and 

 resemble the adult form swathed up. The workers carry them 

 about as they do the larvze, and Avith the same intentions. 



When the metamorphosis is completed the perfect ant is 

 absolutely too weak to tear open the silk of its cocoon, and 

 would inevitably perish in this natural prison were it not for the 

 vigilance of the workers, which, like excellent nurses, never let their 

 charges out of their sight. Perceiving that a change has taken 

 place inside the cocoon, these admirable attendants open it with 

 their mandibles, and set free their new companion. But even 

 when thus safely born the lately metamorphosed insects are not 

 in a condition cither to take care of themselves, or to take a part 

 in the labours of the community, so their nurses do not leave them, 

 but give them nourishment, and then lead them all over the nest, 

 and thus appear to introduce them to their new life. Fortunately, 



