these creatures been destroyed in combat by rival contention, the animosity must have been excessive; but it is more probable that they met their death by some other infliction. One year, on the 3d of March, my laborer being employed in cutting up ant-hills, or tumps, as we call them, exposed to view multitudes of the yellow species (formica flava) in their winter’s retirement. They were collected in numbers in little cells and compartments, communicating with others by means of narrow passages. In many of the cells they had deposited their larvæ, which they were surrounding and attending, but not brooding over or covering. Being disturbed by our rude operations, they removed them from our sight to more hidden compartments. The larvæ were small. Some of these ant-hills contained multitudes of the young of the woodlouse (oniscus armadillo), inhabiting with perfect familiarity the same compartments as the ants, crawling about with great activity with them, and perfectly domesticated with each other. They were small and white; but the constant vibration of their antennæ, and the alacrity of their motions, manifested a healthy vigor. The ants were in a somewhat torpid state; but on being removed into a temperate room, they assumed much of their summer animation. How these creatures are supported during the winter season it is difficult to comprehend, as in no one instance could we perceive any store or provision made for the supply of their wants. The minute size of the larvæ manifested that they had been recently deposited; and consequently that their parents had not remained during winter in a dormant state, and thus free from the calls of hunger. The preceding month of February, and part of January, had been remarkably severe; the frost had penetrated deep into the earth, and long held it frozen; the ants were in many cases not more than four inches beneath the surface, and must have been inclosed in a mass of frozen soil for a long period; yet they, their young, and the onisci, were perfectly uninjured by it; affording another proof of the fallacy of the commonly received opinion, that cold is universally destructive to insect life. Some creatures may be injured or destroyed by frost, but the larger portion of them nature has provided with constitutions to which it is innocuous, or furnished with instinct to prevent its harming them. These emmets had probably received no substance, or required any, from the time of their retirement in the autumn, a period of full six months; were inclosed during the space of thirty days in a mass of frozen earth, and yet remained perfectly uninjured by this long abstinence and frost.