Ants 



bring her and regains some of her original plumpness, but 

 she remains all the time, perhaps for fifteen years, a lonely, 

 self-sacrificing, egg-laying machine. 



In an incredibly short time the community is in full 

 swing. The ill-formed original workers are replaced by 

 more lusty individuals, as the eggs, so freely provided 

 by the queen, mature. These eggs are elongate and 

 yellowish ; they are always laid in clusters and not in 

 special cells, as with the social bees and wasps. The 

 greatest care is bestowed upon them by the workers. 

 Almost hourly they lick their charges, covering them 

 with saliva, which causes them to stick together in batches 

 and also acts as an antiseptic, preventing the growth of 

 harmful moulds. The drying of the eggs and their con- 

 sequent falling away into separate units would be very 

 inconvenient for the workers. Single eggs would entail 

 much labour in transport, batches of eggs are more easily 

 carried, and an accident to the nest might render necessary 

 their rapid removal to a place of safety. 



Also, as the temperature and moisture of the nest varies 

 from hour to hour, so do the workers carry the eggs from 

 chamber to chamber in the nest in an endeavour to keep 

 the conditions equable. As they are held together by 

 saliva it is possible to move several at a time. The grubs 

 which hatch from the later eggs of the queen or queens 

 each nest may contain as many as thirty of these royal 

 insects are just as helpless as were their elder brothers 

 and sisters. They are translucent, soft-bodied, blind, 

 legless, helpless little creatures, in shape like a miniature 

 " crook-necked " gourd. Sometimes they are hairless but 

 more often hairy, to their advantage. A hairy coat raises 

 their bodies a little way from the ground and so preserves 

 them from damp, just as one raises a wooden hut from 

 the ground to allow a current of air to pass beneath. Such 

 a coat acts as a protection against their elder sisters who 

 may feel hungry, for ants are cannibals on occasion ; it 

 causes them to stick together in groups, an advantage in 



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