256 NATURE-STUDY REVIEW [14:C— Sept., 1918 



day was over and she was a Queen. How shall we ever know what 

 went through her ant -mind that night ? Did she think and dream 

 joyously of the day of freedom she has spent flying in the golden 

 sunlight, and of her beautiful little lover ; or did she remember how 

 he had left her with a precious gift and how wearily she had wan- 

 dered through the garden? Perhaps she felt afraid and lonely 

 without her brothers and sisters, and the nurses and waiting maids 

 who had taken royal care of her ever since she was born. 



II 

 WINTER IN A CELL 



In the morning, when the warmth came again, the Queen 

 wakened and crawled to the edge of the leaf. The yellow light had 

 come back to the garden but her wings did not eagerly spread 

 themselves and lift her up. They were limp and weak. No little 

 worker ants came running up to feed her honey-dew from their 

 own hungry mouths. But, for the first time in her life she was not 

 hungry. It was with a stern determination that she walked out 

 from her hiding place and set forth again. Before long she stopped 

 by a second rose bush and smelled the earth around it with her 

 antennas. Close to the base of the bush she found a stone half 

 hidden beneath the grass, and she smelled and felt of it carefully. 

 Then she began to dip the earth away. 



She had never before used her fine, sharp-toothed mandibles but 

 she went about her work with a craftsman's skill. She scratched 

 the earth a little with her delicate fore-legs and then, opening her 

 mandibles like a pair of saw-toothed tongs, seized bits of loose 

 earth, rolled them into tiny pellets, and carried them away. Then 

 she closed the tongs tightly to form a pointed trowel with which 

 she began to scoop out a tunnel. She worked ceaselessly all the 

 morning, never stopping for breath. There were hard sand grains 

 and pebbles on which she dulled her delicate little tools, and tangled 

 grass roots got in her way. She caught the tip of a wing on one of 

 them and tore it half off, but she scarcely seemed to know it. 



At last she found herself in a little, dark chamber not much bigger 

 than she was, but safely concealed beneath the stone and having 

 skilfully smoothed walls of warm earth. Her work was almost 

 finished and she stopped to survey it. The little cell seemed perfect 

 as she felt it over with her antennas, and after a moment she 



