THE WINTER BY ANTS. 7) 



asylum of which the aphides born at another season 

 have no need ; it is on this account some are produced 

 naked, others enveloped in a covering. The mothers 

 are not, then, truly oviparous, since their young are 

 almost as perfect as they ever will be, in the asylum in 

 wliich Nature has placed them at their birth.' ' 



This is, I think, a mistake. I do not propose here 

 to describe the anatomy of the aphis ; but I may 

 observe that I have examined the female, and find 

 these eggs to arise in the manner described by Huxley ,2 

 and which I have also myself observed in other aphides 

 and in allied genera.^ Moreover, I have opened the eggs 

 themselves, and have also examined sections, and have 

 satisfied myself that they are really eggs containing 

 ordinary yelk. So far from the young insect being 

 ' nearly perfect,' and merely enveloped in a protective 

 membrane, no limbs or internal organs are present. 

 In fact, the young aphis does not develop in them 

 until shortly before they are hatched.* 



When my eggs hatched I naturally thought that 

 the aphides belonged to one of the species usually 

 found on the roots of plants in the nests of Lasius 

 flavus. To my surprise, however, the young creatures 



' The Natural History of Ants, by M. P. Huber, 1820, p. 246. 



^ Linnean Transactums, 1858. 



' PMlosojjJiical Transactions, 1859. 



■• I do not enter here into the technical question of the difference 

 between ova and pseudova. I believe these to be true ova, but the 

 point is that they are not a mere envelope containing a young aphis, 

 but eggs in the ordinary sense, the contents of which consist of yelk, 

 and in which the young aphis is gradually developed. 



