278 A CRUEL CHANGE. 
which might be called a pale blood, and one sweated to see the poor 
little creature, already prudent and timid, unable to complete its offen- 
sive arrangements, and to extricate (apparently to snatch or pluck away) 
its two bleeding arms. 
I have explained this at some length, in order to make the reader 
understand the passionate interest felt by the ants in the little balls 
which, to our eyes, seem so insignificant. Beneath its soft and trans- 
parent tissue they feel the infant palpitating under its two touching 
forms,—the creature, denuded and innocent, which dreameth still—the 
creature already formed and intelligent, perceiving everything, but 
incapable of self-defence, and, before it sees the light, disturbed by all 
the fears and agitations of existence. 
The most painful shock for the young of the insects is the sudden 
cold; at least, the nudity, the exposure to the air and light. This is so 
antipathetic and painful to them, that in certain species it is the source 
of their arts and their most ingenious devices. The eggs and nymphs 
of the ants in their tiny transparent swaddling-robe,—and still more 
the larvee which are deprived of it,—feel with an excessive sensibility 
every atmospheric variation. Hence the delicate and continual atten- 
tions of their nurses in carrying them from place to place, in translat- 
ing them from one to another of the well-contrived steps of their thirty 
or forty stories, in protecting their dear little chilly charge from cold, 
damp, or excessive heat. A degree more or less means for it life or 
death. 
It is a cruel and tragical change for these children of love, spoiled 
hitherto with excessive indulgence, and tended with greater care than 
any princess, when they are abruptly deprived of their garments,— 
stripped, with blows from pincers, teeth, and claws,—and despoiled by 
the hands of the executioner. Suddenly exposed to the burning sun, 
dragged hither, pushed thither, rolled over all the roughnesses of a coarse 
sandy soil,—sensible, infinitely sensible, in their new condition of naked- 
ness, to the shocks, blows, and rude somersaults which their violent 
enemies do not spare them ! 
In towns captured by a furious enemy, it has happened that the 
