For another instance of affection almost maternal for the young and helpless larvæ, let us take a peep into an ant's nest. So soon as ever the young larvæ emerge from the eggs they require the unremitting attention of the best and most careful nurses in order to rear them. They must be kept clean, fed, and taken for an airing as regularly as the day returns. By means of their tongues, which are incessantly used in licking them, their coats are kept of the most snowy white. They are fed three or four times a day by their nurses, who take care to masticate the food for them, and thus prepare it for their tender mouths. But the most strange part is their regularly being taken out for the benefit of the air and warmth. Some of the ants at the top of the nest watch for the first beams of the welcome sun, and, as soon as they pour upon the nest, they hasten down below in a great bustle to wake up the nurses, and bid them take the young ones out of their chambers and bring them up to the light, which these indefatigable ants quickly set about to do. After basking there all day long the nurses take care not to expose the delicate constitutions of the larvæ to the chill evening air; and soon as the sun begins to sink towards the horizon they carefully take them up and carry them to the warm deep cell below. For fear, perhaps, of their taking cold, they never allow them to be taken out in raw, damp, or frosty weather. It must not be forgotten, however, that these ants are not the parents of the larvæ; they are only the nurses. But it becomes us now to pursue the more immediate subject of these remarks, and ask the reader's attention to a few particulars about the _larva_. It is a great pity, for the sake of a clear perception of the facts of insect history, that there is a sad confusion of names in use among the majority of persons in speaking of the different forms and changes of insects. Who would imagine that caterpillar, grub, maggot, and larva, signified one and the same stage of the life of an insect? This abuse of terms cannot but render the knowledge of any science less easily retained than it would otherwise be, for the question is continually arising in the mind--If these all mean the same, why is not one term enough to express them? Let us then renounce those of uncertain meaning, and when we wish to give a name to the insect just emerged from its eggshell, let us call it by its proper name, the _Larva_.[C]