AFFECTION OF INSECTS FOR THEIR YOUNG. 365 



safety, than in carrying off these little bodies to a place of 

 security. To effect this purpose the whole community is 

 in motion, and no danger can divert them from attempt- 

 ing its accomplishment. An observer having cut an ant 

 in two, the poor mutilated animal did not relax in its af- 

 fectionate exertions. With that half of the body to which 

 the head remained attached, it contrived previously to ex- 

 piring to carry off ten of these white masses into the inte- 

 rior of the nest ! You will readily divine that these attrac- 

 tive objects are the young of the ants in one of the first or 

 imperfect states. They are in fact not the eggs, as they are 

 vulgarly called, but the pupa?, which the working ants 

 tend with the most patient assiduity. But I must give you 

 a more detailed account of their operations, beginning 

 with the actual eggs. 



These, which are so small as to be scarcely visible to 

 the naked eye, as soon as deposited by the queen ant, who 

 drops them at random in her progress through the nest, 

 are taken charge of by the workers, who immediately seize 

 them and carry them in their mouths, in small parcels, 

 incessantly turning them backwards and forwards with 

 their tongue for the purpose of moistening them, without 

 which they would come to nothing. They then lay them 

 in heaps, which they place in separate apartments a , and 

 constantly tend until hatched into larvae ; frequently in 

 the course of the day removing them from one quarter of 

 the nest to another, as they require a warmer or cooler, 

 a moister or drier atmosphere ; and at intervals brooding 

 over them as if to impart a genial warmth b . Experiments 

 have been made to ascertain whether these assiduous 

 nurses could distinguish their eggs if intermixed with 

 ' Huber, 69. b De Geer, ii. 1099. 



