AFFECTION OF INSECTS FOR THEIR YOUNG. 367 



as well as providing for their own subsistence, falls to 

 the lot of the working ants, we are almost ready to re- 

 gard the burthen as greater than can be borne by such 

 minute agents ; and we shall not wonder at the inces- 

 sant activity with which we see them foraging on every 

 side. 



Their labour does not end here. It is necessary that 

 the larvffi should be kept extremely clean ; and for (his 

 purpose the ants are perpetually passing their tongue 

 and mandibles over their body, rendering them by this 

 means perfectly white ^. After the young grubs have 

 attained their full growth, they surround themselves 

 with a silken cocoon and become pupae, which, food ex- 

 cepted, require as much attention as in the larva state. 

 Every morning they are transported from the bottom 

 of the nest to the surface, and every evening returned 

 to their former quarters. And if, as is often the case, 

 the nest be thrown into ruins by the unlucky foot of a 

 passing animal, in addition to all these daily and hourly 

 avocations, is superadded the immediate necessity of 

 collecting the pupae from the earth with which they 

 have been mixed, and of restoring the nest to its pris- 

 tine state ••, 



» Huber. 78. 



*• The Russian shepherds ingeniously avail themselves of the attach- 

 ment of ants to their young, for obtaining with little trouble a collection 

 of the pupae, which they sell as a dainty food for nightingales. They 

 scatter an ant's nest upon a dry plot of ground, surrounded with a shal- 

 lovr trench of water, and place on one side of it a few fir branches. 

 Under these the ants, having no other alternative, carefully arrange all 

 their pupae, and in an hour or two the shepherd finds a large heap 

 clean and ready for market. Anderson's Recreations in Agrimiiun-, .Jcc. 

 iv. 158, 



