818 DIVISION III. ARTICULATED AMIMALS.—CLASS IV. INSECTA. 
are obliged to gather each day the sugary liquids destined for the food of 
the larvx. 
From their birth a troop of nurses is charged with the care of them. 
They put them out in the open air during the day. Hardly has the sun 
risen, when the ants, placed just under the roof, go to tell those which are 
beneath, by touching them with their antennw, or shaking them with their 
mandibles. In a few seconds all the outlets are crowded with workers 
carrying out the larve in order to place them on the top of the ant-hill, 
that they may be exposed to the beneficent heat of the sun. When the 
Jarve have remained some time in the same place, their guardians move 
them away from the direct action of the solar rays, and put them in cham- 
bers a little way from the top of the hill, where a milder heat can still reach 
them. 
Nothing is more amusing than to observe the shifts ants are put to in 
transporting objects of great size. They stumble; they tumble “head over 
heels ;” they roll down precipices; but, in spite of all accidents, return to 
their task, and always accomplish it. 
The tranquil inhabitants of these subterranean republics are bound together 
by a mutual affection in a devoted fraternity, which makes them ever ready 
to assist each other. They are a real Essenean or Masonic order. They 
all help one another as much as they can. If an ant is tired, a comrade 
carries it on its back. Those which are so absorbed with their work that 
they have no time to think of their food, are fed by their companions. 
When an ant is wounded, the first one who meets it renders it assistance, 
and earries it home. Latreille, having torn the antenne from an ant, saw 
another approach the poor wounded one, and pour, with its tongue, a few 
drops of a yellow liquid on the bleeding wound. 
Iluber the younger one day took an ant’s nest to populate one of those 
glass contrivances which he used for making his observations, and which 
consisted of a sort of glass bell placed over the nest. Our naturalist set at 
liberty one part of the ants, which fixed themselves at the foot of a neigh- 
boring chestnut tree. The rest were kept, during four months, in the appa- 
ratus ; and at the end of this time Huber moved the whole into the garden, 
and a few ants managed to escape. Having met their old companions, who 
still lived at the foot of the chestnut tree, they recognized them. They were 
seen, in fact, all of them, to gesticulate ; to caress each other mutually with 
their antenna; to take each other by the mandibles, as if to embrace in 
token of joy; and they then reéntered together the nest at the foot of the 
chestnut tree. Very soon they came in a crowd to look for the other ants 
under the bell, and in a few hours our observer’s apparatus was completely 
evacuated by its prisoners. When an ant has discovered any rich prey, far 
