8 PUPA—IMAGO. 
selves, carefully unfolding their legs and smoothing 
out the wings, with truly feminine tenderness and 
delicacy. Our countryman Gould was the first to 
observe, and the fact has since been fully confirmed 
by Forel, that the pupz are unable to emerge from the 
cocoons without the assistance of the workers. The 
ants generally remain from three to four weeks in 
this condition. 
In the case of ants, as with other insects which pass 
through similar metamorphoses, such as bees, wasps, 
moths, butterflies, flies, and beetles, &c., the larval 
stage is the period of growth. During the chrysalis 
stage, though immense changes take place, and the 
organs of the perfect insect are more or less rapidly 
developed, no food is taken, and there is no addition 
to the size or weight. 
The imago or perfect insect again takes food, but 
does not grow. The ant, like all the insects above 
named, is as large when it emerges from the pupa as it 
ever will be; excepting, indeed, that the abdomen of 
the females sometimes increases in size from the de- 
velopment of the eggs. 
We have hitherto very little information as to the 
length of life in ants in the imago, or perfect, state. 
So far, indeed, as the preparatory stages are concerned, 
there is little difficulty in approximately ascertaining 
the facts; namely, that while in summer they take 
only a few weeks; in some species, as our small yellow 
meadow ants, the autumn larve remain with compara- 
