Miscellaneous. 421 
speaker’s suggestions and directions. On or about June 16, Mr. 
Potts captured a queen of C. pennsylvanicus running across his 
parlour floor, late at night. He placed it in a bottle, but forgot to 
examine it until five days later (21st and 22nd June), when he was 
surprised to find that the ant was alive, and had laid six or eight 
eggs in the otherwise empty bottle; which eggs, in their various 
stages of development, she continued to attend for about fifty days. 
He fed the ant by dropping into her bottle a pinch of white sugar, 
which he moistened every evening with a drop or two of water; at 
which timesshe quitted her otherwise unremitting watch over the egos 
and the larvze, to press her labium for a moment into the sweet fluid, 
her labial and maxillary palps meanwhile rapidly vibrating with plea- 
sure. The egg-laying was, from the first, very deliberate ; one or two 
eggs were added to the original stock from time to time, until about 
the 15th August, making the highest number counted, of all ages, 
nineteen. 
He did not observe the date of the first hatching, but these larvae, 
at first no larger than the eggs, and only distinguishable upon close 
observation by the slight grooves between the body-segments and the 
ill-defined head, grew gradually at first, and afterwards more rapidly, 
and reached finally a length of about 7 inch and began to spin their 
cocoons. On the morning of July 20, the first was surrounded by a 
single layer of web, but could still be seen working inside it. By 
evening the cocoon was too opaque to be seen through. On the 
morning of the 21st the second larva was covered in like manner, 
and the third by the evening of the 22nd. For some days he was 
able to detect the dark form of the young ant in one of these 
cocoons, and on the evening of August 11 a worker was running 
about the bottle and already essaying its administrations upon the 
undeveloped eggs and the next series of larvae, quite as big as and 
much heavier than itself. We have, then, the period from, say 
June 20 to July 20 (thirty days), occupied in the development of 
the first eggs and the fulfilment of the larval stage; from J uly 20 
to August 11, say twenty-two days, were spent in the pupa state. 
The manner of the young worker was very nervous and far from 
soothing, especially to the well-grown larvae, who evidently much 
prefer a mother’s care to that of an elder sister. He did not observe 
this antling feeding from the sugar, but upon one or two occasions 
saw osculatory advances towards its mother, which seemed to 
indicate that it was not above receiving its nutriment from the 
maternal fount to which it became accustomed during its wriggling 
youth. It constantly climbed over the eggs and larvee, apparently 
nipping them with its mandibles, but not moving them to any pur- 
pose. He saw no well-defined attempt at feeding them on its part ; 
though, after patient observation, upon several occasions, he observed 
this act performed by the parent ant. She would caress the larva 
by sundry pats with her antenne upon each side of the face, when, 
if hungry, it would lift up its head under her mandibles, placing its 
labium against hers, at which time a flow of liquid down the larval 
throat was seen. 
