154 Chapter IV. 



but is guided and influenced by various sensitive 

 affections and perceptions. In bee-hives the eggs are 

 simply deposited by the queens in the cells previously 

 prepared by the workers, and the young bee-larva 

 goes through the successive stages of development in 

 one and the same cell. With ants breeding shows far 

 greater variety and independence. The eggs laid by 

 the queen are received by the workers and gathered in 

 clusters of various dimensions. Then from all sides 

 they are licked again and again with the utmost care, 

 and begin to increase by the endosmosis of the nour- 

 ishing juice. 1 This is the first stage in the rearing of 

 the young in ant-communities. As soon as the egg 

 has developed into a larva, there follows the second, 

 the feeding and nursing of the larvae. When the time 

 for entering the state of a pupa has arrived, the ant- 

 larvae are carried by their nurses to a spot covered 

 with damp earth, whereupon each larva is surrounded 

 by a case or little dome of earth, within which it spins 

 its cocoon, enwrapping the whole body. From time to 

 time some worker comes to see, whether the cocoon is 

 finished. As soon as it is, it is carefully cleansed of 

 adhering earth, and is then stored up in a neat little 

 heap in company with others that have reached the 

 same maturity. With those ant-species, whose larvae 

 do not spin cocoons, the larvae are not encased in earth 

 before their pupation. On that account the ex- 

 tremely tender skin of the pupa unprotected by a 

 cocoon requires all the more care and caution, lest 

 grains of sand or mould should enter between the 



J ) On the growth of ant-eggs see Forel, "Fourmis de la Suisse," 

 p. 388; it is of minor importance, whether or not the increase in volume 

 of ant-eggs be called growth in the proper sense of the term. 



