226 MODERN CLASSIFICATION OF INSECTS. 

down upon the breast (jig. 86. 1. larva of F. rufa seen sideways; 
2. ditto magnified, seen from beneath, after Ratzeburg). The body 
is composed of the head and twelve segments. The head (fig. 86. 
3.) is furnished with two small horny hook-like pieces, which, although 
evidently the analogues of the mandibles, are too wide apart to be 
used as such; below these are four small points or bristles, two 
on each side, and a subcylindrical, soft, fleshy lobe, which is retractile, 
and by the assistance of which the larva receives its food’ from the 
workers, consisting of a nutritious fluid which they have previously 
elaborated in their stomach, and subsequently disgorged. Honey 
dew, and other saccharine fluids collected from different vegetables, 
probably form its chief base. De Geer, however, records the circum- 
stance, that he had observed the neuters destroy and devour the 
young larve which they had previously guarded with such great 
tenderness. Possibly their instinct might have inspired them with 
despair of ever rearing these unfortunate larvae. A peculiar duty of 
the neuters consists in removing these larva and the pupz, from time 
to time, to various parts of the nest, where a proper degree of tem- 
perature exists. Latreille has even observed that the neuters of 
Myrmica Cespitum keep the larvae and pupz separate. Dr. F. T. 
C. Ratzeburg has made the segmental development of these insects 
the subject of an elaborate memoir, to which I have already alluded 
(in p. 79.), his chief object being to prove that the head of the pupa 
is composed of the head and first segment of the larva (the eyes of 
the pupa being visible through the skin of the hind part of such first 
segment of the larva), and that the fifth segment of the body of the 
larva (exclusive of the head) becomes the peduncle of the pupa; the 
metathoracic prescutum (fig. 85. 10. t. 4.) and the metathoracic scu- 
tellum (85.10. e) respectively occupying a separate segment of the — 
