A PHILOSOPHER'S EXPERIMENT, 277 
it shortly before the emergence of the perfect insect, and you find a 
being of exactly the same colour, all folded and rolled up in itself like 
the human embryo in its mother’s womb. When stretched out, the 
aspect of the future ant is easily recognized, but it singularly differs 
from it in character: the head is quite innocent; lift up the antenne, 
which, in this condition, resemble ears, and the young white head 
reminds you of that of a little white rabbit. The eyes alone,—two black 
points,—marked with sufficient prominency, indicate the next stage of 
colouring. For the rest, there is nothing to forewarn you that this 
little, weak, and denuded animal, so touching and so interesting, will 
become in a few days the black being so full of energy, so keen with 
life, so fierce in blood, which will traverse the earth in a fury of labour 
and burning activity. 
One comprehends that in this stage of existence the milky and suc- 
culent nymphs of the ants will prove a very appetizing dish for the 
bird, and for the infinite number of creatures which hunt them 
creedily. 
I have dissected only one nymph in the last days of its nymph-period, 
and when near its time of hatching. But that one was sufficient. The 
sight (seen through a lens of twelve times magnifying power) was very 
painful. The being was completely formed, and already black on the 
belly, yellow on the corselet. The head was intelligent, like that of an 
old ant, but pale, and changing from yellow to black. Still weak and 
heavy, and seized, as it were, with vertigo, it rolled from right to left, 
and from left to right, with a singular effect of somnolence and pain. 
You might have supposed it to be saying: “Ah me! so soon! Why 
hast thou called me so cruelly, before the proper hour, from my soft 
cradle to the harsh drudgery of life? But it is all at end for me!” It 
struggled nevertheless to confront the unknown chances of its novel 
situation, and to disengage its trammelled limbs. The antennee were 
already perfectly free, and stirred about in their anxiety to discern the 
new world; this cerebral organ revealed very plainly the disquietude 
and agitation of the brain. Its greatest perplexity arose from its 
failure to release its two arms (or anterior limbs). It laboured violently 
to do so. They were glued to the body by an indescribable something 
