▼OL. II.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 151 



between these little creatures, and with what violence the black ones will 

 seize on the red, pinching them on the head with forceps or claws, till they 

 have killed them, which done, they will carry them out of the field from their 

 bank. But if you put black ants into a bank of the red, the black seem to be 

 so sensible of the strangeness of the place they are in, that there they will not 

 meddle with the red, but as if they were frightened, and concerned for nothing 

 but self-preservation, run away. 



3. Upon opening these banks, I observe first a white substance, which to 

 the bare eye looks like the scatterings of fine white sugar or salt, but very soft 

 and tender ; and if you take a bit of it, as big perhaps as a mustard seed, and 

 lay it on the object plate of a good microscope, you may, by opening it with 

 the point of a needle, discern many pure white and clear appearances in dis- 

 tinct membranes, all figured like the lesser sort of birds' eggs, and as clear as 

 a fish's bladder. This same substance I find in the ants themselves, which I 

 take to be the true ants' eggs ; it being obvious that wherever this is uncover- 

 ed, they make it their business to carry it away in their mouths to secure it, 

 and will, after you have scattered it, lay it on a heap again with what speed 

 they can. 



4. I observe they lie in multitudes upon this spawn ; and after a little time, 

 every one of these small adherents is turned into a little vermicle, as small as a 

 mite, hardly discerned to stir ; but after a few days more you may perceive a 

 feeble motion of flexion and extension, and they begin to look yellowish and 

 hairy, shaped very like a small maggot ; and so keeping that shape grow almost 

 as large as an ant, and have every one a black spot on them. 



5. Then they get a film over them, whitish and of an oval shape, for 

 which reason I suppose they are commonly called ants' eggs, which yet, pro- 

 perly speaking, they are not. [These are the chrysalids.] 



6. I have, to prevent mistakes, opened many of these vulgarly called ants* 

 eggs, I mean the lesser sort (for there are some as big as a wheat com, others 

 less than a rye corn) and in some I find only a maggot, to appearance just such 

 as was described before : in others I find a maggot beginning to put on the 

 shape of an ant about the head, with two little yellowish specks where the eyes 

 are designed : in others a further progress, and furnished with every thing to 

 complete the shape of an ant, but wholly transparent, the eyes only excepted, 

 which are then as black as black bugles. 



7. But when they have newly put on this shape, I could never discern the 

 least motion in any part of the little creature, the reason of which may perhaps 

 be the weakness of their fibres ; for after a little more time, when they begin 

 to be brownish, they have strength to stir all their parts. 



8. At last I met with some of these reputed eggs, which having carefully 



