24.6 RELATION OF ANTS 
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 which Nature has placed 
them at their birth. M. Bonnet vainly 
attempted to preserve these kind of 
eggs in his chamber until the spring; 
he imagines, that to have attained this 
end, they should have been kept in a 
certain degree of humidity, which would 
have happened to them in a state of 
nature. 
It appears, then, that ants know every 
thing that is necessary to the preserv- 
ation of these eggs; they pass their 
tongue constantly over them, and invest 
them with a glutinous matter, which re- 
tains them together. They, in conse- 
quence, are preserved until the period 
when the pucerons quit them: they em- 
ploy then the same means to preserve 
their covey, if I may use this expression, 
that M. Bonnet supposed would pre- 
serve these eggs, and secure their dis- 
