riage season, and in the early twilight of a warm
day the air will be dark with the winged lovers. After the wedding
trip the female tears off her wings--partly by pulling, but mostly by
contortions of her body--for her life under ground would render wings
not only unnecessary, but cumbersome; while the male is not exposed to
the danger of being eaten by his cannibal spouse, as among spiders,
nor to be set upon and assassinated by infuriated spinsters, as among
bees, but drags out a precarious existence for a few days, and then
either dies or is devoured by insectivorous insects. There is reason
to believe that some females are fertilized before leaving the nest. I
have observed flights of the common _Formica rufa_, in which the
females flew away solitary and to great distances before they
descended. In such cases it is certain that they were fertilized
before their flight.

When a fertilized queen starts a colony it proceeds much in this way:
When a shaft has been sunk deep enough to insure safety, or a
sheltered position secured underneath the trunk of a tree or a stone,
the queen in due time deposits her first eggs, which are carefully
reared and nourished. The first brood consists wholly of workers, and
numbers between twenty-five and forty in some species, but is smaller
in others. The mother ant seeks food for herself and her young till
the initial brood are matured, when they take up the burden of life,
supply the rapidly increasing family with food, as well as the mother
ant, enlarge the quarters, share in the necessary duties, and, in
short, become the _real_ workers of the nest before they are scarcely
out of the shell. The mother ant is seldom allowed to peer beyond her
dark quarters, and then only in company with her body guard. She is
fed and cared for by the workers, and she in turn assists them in the
rearing of the young, and has even been known to give her strength for
the extension of the formicary grounds. Several queens often exist in
one nest, and I have seen workers drag newly fertilized queens into a
formicary to enlarge their resources. As needs be, the quantity of
eggs laid is very great, for the loss of life in the ranks of the
workers is very large; few survive the season of their hatching,
although queens have been known to live eight years. (Lubbock.)

The ant life has four well marked periods: First, the egg; second, the
grub or larva; third, the chrysalis or pupa; fourth, the imago, or
p