300 INSECT MISCELLANIES. 



each other, when they meet, and to show their re- 

 gard for the queen. Some of them gently walk over 

 her ; others dance round her, and all endeavour to 

 exert their loyalty and affection. She is generally 

 encircled with a cluster of attendants, who, if you 

 separate them from her, soon collect themselves into 

 a body, and inclose her in the midst. However ro- 

 mantic this description may appear, it may easily be 

 proved by an obvious experiment. If you place a 

 queen-ant with her retinue under a glass, you will, 

 in a few moments, be convinced of the honour they 

 pay and the esteem they entertain for her*." 



The same ingenious observer remarked, however, 

 that as soon as a female ant had laid eggs in any 

 cell, the attentions of her followers became obviously 

 less, their chief concern then being the care of the 

 eggs. She herself also exhibits uneasiness, and, 

 becoming unsettled, she wanders away to another 

 apartment, where she obtains renewed homage from 

 another party, who, in turn, abandon her as soon 

 as she furnishes them with a deposit of eggs. 

 Huber preserved a family of the yellow ant (^Formica 

 flava) all the winter, and in April, taking a glass 

 with a little earth, let down a piece of wood about 

 midway into the vessel, upon which he placed some 

 plants, aphides, and the ants with their larvae, and 

 one female. " They gathered together," he adds, 

 *' a little earth which they found scattered over the 

 leaves, and constructing therewith a little lodge be- 

 tween the branches, they placed their queen in it. 

 In a few days they discovered a narrow passage be- 

 tween the glass and the border of the plank, and 

 finding moist earth underneath, they lost no time in 

 constructing in this place lodges, paths, and vaulted 

 chambers. Thither they transported the greater 

 part of the larvae ; but they could not so easily in- 

 * Account of English Ants. 



