"These cases are not always at a few inches from the ground. I saw one five feet above the soil, and this one deserves also to be described. It consisted of a blackish, rather short tube, which was built round a small branch of the poplar at the point where it left the trunk. The ants reached it by the interior of the tree, which was excavated, and without showing themselves, they were able to reach their plant-lice by an opening which they had made in the base of this branch. This tube was formed of rotten wood, of the vegetable earth of this very tree, and I saw many a time the ants bringing little bits in their mouths to repair the breaches I had made in their pavilion. These are not very common traits, and are not of the number of those which can be attributed to an habitual routine."[34] [34] "Traité d'Insectologie," &c., pp. 198-201. One day, Pierre Huber discovered in a nest of yellow ants a cell containing a mass of eggs having the appearance of ebony. They were surrounded by a number of ants, which appeared to be guarding them, and endeavouring to carry them off. Huber took possession of the cell, its inhabitants, and of the little treasure it contained, and placed the whole in a box lid, covered with a piece of glass, so as to be more easily observed. He saw the ants approach the eggs, pass their tongues in between them, depositing on them a liquid. They seemed to treat these eggs exactly as they would have treated those of their own species; they felt them with their antennæ, gathered them together, raised them frequently to their mouths, and did not leave them for an instant. They took them up, and turned them over, and after having examined them with care, they carried them with extreme delicacy into the little box of earth placed near them.[35] [35] "Recherches," &c., pp. 205, 206. [Illustration: Fig. 91.--Aphides and Ant (magnified).] These were not, however, ants' eggs. They were the eggs of aphides. The young which were soon to be hatched were to give to the provident ants a reward for the attentions they had lavished upon them. How wonderful are the life and the habits of the plant-lice, and their relations to ants! But we should be led on too far, if we were to pursue these attractive details. We pass on now to the history of another family--namely, the _Gallinsecta_, as Réaumur calls them, or _Cocci_. They pass the greatest part of their lives--that is to say, many months--entirely motionless, sticking to the stalks or branches of shrubs; remaining thus as devoid of movement as the plant to which they are attached. One would say that they were part and parcel of it. Their form is so simple, that nothing in their exterior would make one guess them to be insects. The larger they become the less they resemble living things. When the coccus is in a state for multiplying its species, when it is engaged in laying its thousands of eggs, it resembles only an excrescence of the tree.