“Just as little birds receive the beakful of food, so do the larvæ take their nourishment. When they are hungry they raise themselves a little and seek the mouth of some one of the workers engaged in ministering to them. The nursing ant opens its mandibles and lets a tiny drop of sweetened liquid be taken from its mouth. Thus, one suck at a time, the nutritive juice is distributed until the entire brood is fed. “But carrying the larvæ into the sun and feeding them will not suffice: they must also be kept in a state of extreme cleanliness. The workers bestow upon their charges the same tender care that the mother cat exercises toward her kittens. Over and over again they lick the nursling’s body to give it perfect whiteness, and they tug cautiously at the wrinkled skin when the transformation draws near. “Before casting this skin the larva spins itself a cocoon of silk, elongated and cylindrical in shape, pale yellow in color, very smooth, and compact in texture. Under cover of this protecting sac, the worm becomes a nymph. In this form the ant assumes its final shape, lacking only strength and a little firmness. All its members are distinct, but enveloped in a fine membrane which it must strip off to become a perfect insect. “If you disturb an ant-hill you will see the workers hastening to carry away and put in a safe place certain cylindrical bodies having somewhat the appearance of grains of wheat and very inappropriately called ant-eggs. They are not the eggs of the insect, which are in reality much smaller; they are cocoons with their contents, larvæ at first, nymphs later. “When the time comes for leaving its cocoon, the enclosed ant is unable of itself to gain its freedom by piercing with its mandibles the silken envelope; it possesses nothing resembling the solvent liquid which the silk-worm holds in reserve in its stomach; nor has it at the forward end of its prison-cell a door for exit analogous to the curious paling provided for the great peacock-butterfly. It would perish in its silk sack if the working ants did not bestir themselves for its deliverance. “Three or four of these mount the cocoon and strive to open it at the end corresponding to the prisoner’s head. They begin by weakening the texture of the sac by tearing away a few threads of silk at the point where the opening is to be made; then, nipping and twisting the tissue so difficult to break through, they at last succeed in puncturing it with a number of holes near one another, whereupon the mandibles are applied at one of these holes just as one would apply a pair of scissors, and a narrow strip is cut away. At this hard labor the ants work in relays, toiling and resting by turn. One holds the narrow strip that has been cut, while a second enlarges the opening, and a third gently extricates the young ant from its natal sac.