The most painful shock for the young of the insects is the sudden cold; at least, the nudity, the exposure to the air and light. This is so antipathetic and painful to them, that in certain species it is the source of their arts and their most ingenious devices. The eggs and nymphs of the ants in their tiny transparent swaddling-robe,--and still more the larvæ which are deprived of it,--feel with an excessive sensibility every atmospheric variation. Hence the delicate and continual attentions of their nurses in carrying them from place to place, in translating them from one to another of the well-contrived steps of their thirty or forty stories, in protecting their dear little chilly charge from cold, damp, or excessive heat. A degree more or less means for it life or death. It is a cruel and tragical change for these children of love, spoiled hitherto with excessive indulgence, and tended with greater care than any princess, when they are abruptly deprived of their garments,--stripped, with blows from pincers, teeth, and claws,--and despoiled by the hands of the executioner. Suddenly exposed to the burning sun, dragged hither, pushed thither, rolled over all the roughnesses of a coarse sandy soil,--sensible, infinitely sensible, in their new condition of nakedness, to the shocks, blows, and rude somersaults which their violent enemies do not spare them! In towns captured by a furious enemy, it has happened that the tombs of the dead have been desecrated. But here, we behold the exhumation of the living,--the despoiling of innocent and all vulnerable creatures, poor bits of skinless flesh, to whom the very lightest touch had been a sufficient agony! This immense execution upon the population and their young was hurried over so rapidly, that at three o'clock in the afternoon nearly all was ended; the city was sacked and depopulated in every corner, and its future beyond all hope of a resurrection. We thought that some fugitive might still be lurking in concealment; that perhaps the conquerors would abandon the desert if we transported them, with the destroyed city, into a paved coach-yard outside the garden; that then would awake in them the remembrance of their family, to whom, moreover, they could carry nothing more to be devoured. Our expectation was realized. On the morning of the 10th of June we saw them scattered along all the roads which led towards their dwelling-place, at the other end of the garden. But the destiny of the vanquished seemed accomplished. The dead and silent city was nothing but a cemetery, where, with the exception of a few scattered bodies, could only be seen some dead wood, some old pods of Northern trees, and their gloomy _aiguilles_ (pines and once-green firs), not less dead than the city itself.