ANTS. 55 
have further to be made for extensive nurseries, for the 
storage of food in some cases, for easy access to food 
supplies in all cases, and for adequate protection against 
the inroads of such of their enemies as they can cope 
with. Verily these multifarious duties form no light task 
for one person to perform; and it is the queen mother, 
whose early married (or widowed) life we are now 
considering, who plans and carries out all these essentials 
in their earlier stages. Had her husband lived, he, 
lazy scamp, would have done nothing to help, and would 
only have been in the way, and have been one more to 
provide for. 
So the queen sets to work, manages to get a living 
somehow, and, when the heavy autumn dews render work 
out of doors impossible for an ant, she bides within. And 
when the nipping frosts of later months make active life 
intolerable, she is supposed to go off for a quiet slumber 
—the only rest she has a chance of getting until her 
coming young family have grown up, and can take over 
the various household duties she has at present to carry 
on alone. 
So the Winter months pass; Spring returns, and, with 
the advent of warmer sunshine, domestic activity recom- 
mences. Her husband died in August, and it is now 
April, and she lays her first egg. This egg is not closed 
up in a cell with a store of good provisions in it like the 
bees lay up for their young ones. The egg, on the contrary, 
has to be carefully looked after at all hours of the day. 
It must not get too dry, too cold, or too warm; so the 
queen mother has, besides her other domestic duties, to 
carry the egg about from place to place many times during 
the day. Soon afterwards a second egg is laid; and the 
tasks are doubled. So matters go on day after day for 
a variable time, ranging from a fortnight to six weeks, 
when the first egg is hatched and the helpless larva is 
divested of its swaddling clothes. The newly-born young 
one now has to be fed, as well as cleaned and tended to 
in other ways. So, whatever happens, the queen mother 
has to go out alone to get food, for there is no reason to 
suppose that it is stored up in any way. Ants feed upon 
