182 SIE J. LUBBOCK ON ANTS, BEES, AND WASBS. 



possible not to suppose that the ants must have had some object 

 in this proceeding, though I am unable to suggest any explana- 

 tion of it. 



On the treatment of Aphides. 



Our countryman Gould, whose excellent little work on ants* 

 has hardly received the attention it deserves, observes that " the 

 queen ant [he is speaking oiLasiusJlavus] lays three different sorts 

 of eggs, the slave, female, and neutral. The two first are depo- 

 sited in the spring, the last in July and part of August ; or, if the 

 summer be extremely favourable, perhaps a little sooner. The 

 female eggs are covered with a thin black membrane, are oblong, 

 and about the sixteenth or seventeenth part of an inch in length. 

 The male eggs are of a more brown complexion, and usually laid 

 in March." 



Here, however, our worthy countryman fell into an error, the 

 eggs which he thus describes not being those of ants, but, as 

 Huber correctly observed, of Aphides f. The error is the more 

 pardonable, because the ants treat these eggs exactly as if they 

 were their own, guarding and tending them with the utmost care. I 

 first met with them in February 1876, and was much astonished, 

 not being at that time aware of Huber's observations. I found, 

 as Huber had done before me, that the ants took the greatest care 

 of these eggs, carrying them off" to the lower chambers with the 

 utmost haste when the nest was disturbed. I brought some 

 home with me and put them near one of my own nests, when the 

 ants carried them inside. That year I was unable to carry my 

 observations further. In 1877 I again procured some of the same 

 eggs, and offered them to my ants, who carried them into the 

 nest, and in the course of March I had the satisfaction of seeing 

 them hatch into young Aphides. M. Huber, however, does not 

 think these are mere ordinary eggs. On the contrary, he agrees 

 with Bonnet, " that the insect, in a state nearly perfect, quits the 

 body of its mother in that covering which shelters it from the 

 cold in winter, and that it is not, as other germs are, in the egg 

 surrounded by food by means of which it is developed and sup- 

 ported. It is nothing more than an asylum of which the Aphides 

 born at another season have no need ; it is on this account some 

 are produced naked, others enveloped in a covering. The mothers 



* An Account of English Ants. By the Eev. W. Gould, 1747, p. 36. 

 t My lamented friend Mr. Smith also observed these eggs (Entom. Annual, 

 1871). He did not, however identify the species to which they belonged. 



