70 EGGS OF APHIDES KEPT THEOUGH 



perhaps a little sooner. The female eggs are covered 

 with a thin black membrane, are oblong, and about 

 the sixteenth or seventeenth part of an inch in length. 

 The male eggs are of a more brown complexion, and 

 usually laid in March.' 



These dark eggr, are not those of ants, but of 

 aphides. The error is very pardonable, because the 

 ants treat these eggs exactly as if they were their own, 

 guarding and tending them with the utmost care. I 

 first met with them in February 1876, and was much 

 astonished, not being at that time aware of Huber's 

 observations. I found, as Huber had done before me, 

 that the ants took great care of these brown bodies, 

 carrying them off to the lower chambers with the 

 utmost haste when the nest was disturbed. I brought 

 some home with me and put them near one of my 

 own nests, when the ants carried them inside. That 

 year I was unable to carry my observations further. 

 In 1877 I again procured some of the same eggs, and 

 offered them to my ants, who carried them into the 

 nest, and in the course of March I had the satisfaction 

 of seeing them hatch into young aphides. M. Huber, 

 however, did not think that these were ordinary egg^. 

 On the contrary, he agreed with Bonnet, ' 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 

 egg surrounded by food by means of which it is de- 

 veloped and supported. It is nothing more than an 



