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ORDER VI.—VEIN-WINGED INSECTS. 247 
place to another with their large jaws, the instruments with 
which they perform all their work. The maggot is white, 
without feet, has a horny, brown head, and is fed like a lit- 
tle bird by a worker, and after a few weeks’ growth spins a 
white cocoon. 
All ants are benumbed during the winter, and lie im- 
movable in their subterranean abodes, without taking any 
kind of food. In the summer, however, their food is very 
various. They eat all kinds of fruit, dead as well as living 
insects, sugar, honey, and other sweet juices, principally 
that of plant-lice, called honey-dew, which exudes from their 
bodies without doing them any injury. Plant-lice, on this 
account, were called by Reaumure, “the milch-cows of the 
ants ;” and to ascertain their abodes in the trees it is only 
necessary to follow the march of the ants, who will climb 
to the top of the highest tree in search of their beloved 
friends, whom they caress in the most affectionate manner, 
sucking the honey-dew from their bodies without harming 
them in the least, although they will attack and devour 
every other kind of insect, even the largest caterpillars. 
This honey-dew, of which the ants are so fond, is nothing 
but the digested vegetable juices, which are continually ex- 
haled by the plant-lice. 
As has already been intimated, ants are not only her- 
bivorous but also carnivorous, and almost any kind of ani- 
mal food is palatable to them. If asmall dead animal—for 
instance, a mouse or a rat, a frog or a lizard—hbe put into 
one of their ant-hills, it will be converted by them into a 
very well-prepared skeleton in less than twenty-four hours ; 
but if it remain longer, it will fall to pieces, leaving only 
the bones, because the ants will eat up even the ligaments 
and cartilages. 
White, oval bodies, resembling barley seeds, are found 
in the ant-hills during the summer, which have sometimes, 
and now are by the common people called ant-eggs, which 
