4 ANTS AND ANT LIFE. 



Henceforth the care of these young is the chief business 

 and the special duty of life of the workers, and it is very 

 worthy of observation that this social tendency is most 

 strongly developed exactly in those creatures which, on 

 account of their sexlessness, are not in a position to have 

 a family of their own and to propagate the society. Every 

 are is bestowed on the eggs laid by the queen, which, 

 according to the observations of Huber, grow in a wonderful 

 and almost inexplicable way, before the larvae, or grubs, are 

 hatched. Since the workers gather the eggs together in 

 little heaps, and lick them constantly with their tongues, the 

 growth apparently takes place by endosmosis ; i.e., through 

 the passage inwards of nourishing matter from without. If 

 the workers are removed from the eggs the latter perish from 

 dryness, which proves that the licking is necessary for the 

 preservation of the life of the egg. After about fourteen 

 days, during which the workers sometimes place the eggs in 

 the higher and sometimes in the lower stories of the nest, in 

 order to protect them from too great heat, cold or damp, 

 small, white, almost inactive little grubs emerge, maggots or 

 larvae without eyes or feet, which can only exist throifgh the 

 nursing of the workers, and whose care requires a far higher 

 kind of attention than the eggs. They are thoroughly well 

 nursed, and, as Blanchard says, no more attentive, watchful 

 nurses, or more devoted to their duty, can be found than 

 these. The larvae can scarcely move and cannot change 

 from place to place. Still less can they eat alone, so that 

 they are thrown entirely on their nurses for support, and 

 these feed them in the same way as birds do their young. 

 The eagerness with which ants are known to seek nourish- 

 ment, especially sweet liquids, is due far less to their own 

 needs than to those of their foster-children. They feed 

 these just in the same way as they do their companions and 

 queens, regurgitating into the mouth the food stored up in 

 the crop or proventriculus, and then giving it from mouth 

 to mouth. The larvae have nothing to do save to take with 

 their tongue the nourishment offered to them, and they show 

 their hunger by stretching out their little brown and gene- 

 rally somewhat retracted heads. During feeding they 

 always lie on their backs ; and since the young ants, after 

 emergence, as will be later shown, are fed for some little 

 time by the older ones, it is easy to see how much tendance, 



