THE WINTER BY ANTS. 71 
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 
are not, then, truly oviparous, since their young are 
almost as perfect as they ever will be, in the asylum in 
which Nature has placed them at their birth.’! 
This is, I think, a mistake. Ido not propose here 
to describe the anatomy of the aphis; but I may 
observe that I have examined the female, and find 
these eggs to arise in the manner described by Huxley,? 
and which I have also myself observed in other aphides 
and in allied genera. Moreover, I have opened the eggs 
themselves, and have also examined sections, and have 
satisfied myself that they are really eggs containing 
ordinary yelk. So far from the young insect being 
‘nearly perfect,’ and merely enveloped in a protective 
membrane, no limbs or internal organs are present. 
In fact, the young aphis does not develop in them 
until shortly before they are hatched. 
When my eggs hatched I naturally thought that 
the aphides belonged to one of the species usually 
found on the roots of plants in the nests of Lasius 
flavus. To my surprise, however, the young creatures 
! The Natural History of Ants, by M. P. Huber, 1820, p. 246. 
2 Linnean Transactions, 1858. 
3 Philosophical Transactions, 1859. 
4 I do not enter here into the technical question of the difference 
between ova and pseudova. I believe these to be true ova, but the 
point is that they are not a mere envelope containing a young aphis, 
but eggs in the ordinary sense, the contents of which consist of yelk, 
and in which the young aphis is gradually developed. 
