454 INSECTS. 



ety of labourers are actually employed in emancipating the young 

 from their fetters, and anticipating all their wants till they are able 

 to provide for themselves. They still watch and follow them for 

 many days, teaching them the ways and labyrinths of their habita- 

 tion, and supplying them abundantly with food. They assist 

 the males and females in expanding their wings, which would 

 otherwise remain folded ; and, whenever they wander to too great 

 a distance, conduct them back in safety : and they continue these 

 offices till the season of their migration is arrived. 



The fecundated females that escape detention, and quit for ever 

 after the paternal roof, no sooner alight upon a spot where any 

 loose earth is to be met with, than they set about forming a habita. 

 tion. The first step they take is to cut oiF their own wings, for 

 which they have no longer any use : and it is extremely curious 

 that they never perform this operation till they find a situation 

 that promises to afford them an asylum. Having now no labourers 

 to work for them, they perform all the household duties themselves. 

 Like the mothers of other animals, they are indefatigable in their 

 attention to their offspring. Thus the same individual, which, 

 when surrounded at home by those who minister to all her wants, 

 and relieve her from exertion, would have reposed in indolence, 

 and been quite careless of her young, acquires new powers from 

 necessity, and fulfills the intention of nature in the formation of 

 new republics. It is impossible to produce a more striking exam- 

 ple of variation in the character of animals, produced by a change 

 of external circumstances. 



Our attention shall next be directed to the way in which ants 

 procure the means of subsistence ; and the views that have been 

 opened to us by M. Huber on this subject are among the most cu- 

 rious of any he has disclosed. It is here, indeed, that the princi- 

 pal errors have been committed, by those who have hitherto pre- 

 tended to instruct us as to the economy of these insects. The 

 collections of larvae were long mistaken for magazines of corn and 

 other food, which it was supposed the ants deposited in granaries 

 as provisions for winter consumption. But the truth is, that they 

 are almost wholly carnivorous, and corn is certainly not an article 

 on which they feed : they are total strangers to the art of hoard- 

 ing, and none of their cells are constructed with this view. The 

 ants, whose occupations confine them at home, depend for their 



