WITH THE PUCERONS. 945 
found, within their reach, a recompence 
for their care and attention. 
The ant-hill, whence these eggs had 
been taken, was situated at the foot of 
an oak, which readily accounts for their 
existence in that place. I discovered 
them in the spring; the pucerons which 
quitted them were very large, for insects 
just born, but they had not yet obtained 
theirfull size. M. Bonnet, to whom we are 
indebted for many important discoveries 
upon the pucerons and their generation, 
speaks of their eggs, which he has often 
seen affixed to the branches of trees; he 
believes that the insect, in a state 
nearly perfect, quits the body of its mo- 
ther in that covering which shelters it 
from the cold in winter, and that it is 
not, as other germs are, in the egg, sur- 
rounded by food, by means of which it is 
developed and supported. It is nothing 
more than an asylum of which the pu- 
cerons born at another season have no 
need: it is on this account some are 
mM 3 
