their
hind legs, charged to watch over the general safety. The busiest
carried in their mandibles, caressed with their legs and their
antennae, licked with their delicate tongues, exposed to the sun, or
carried quickly into the shade certain white balls which
Piccolissima took at first for grains of wheat, because they had the
form and size; but she was satisfied at last that these were the
children of the ants in swaddling clothes. Piccolissima was so
anxious to comprehend the mysterious talk, and the pantomime of all
this innumerable crowd, that she became yet more attentive. The
nurses caressed with their antennae in a peculiar way those eggs
which were beginning to show life, and the little observer saw the
slight movement of the incomplete being who, as soon as he was
bidden, raised his head, which was almost imperceptible even to
microscopic eyes, to receive the offered mouthful.

Whilst Piccolissima observed all this nursery work, an ant came and
placed beneath her, in order to fill up a small hole, a sort of
bundle of little sticks, which rolled away as soon as she left it.
The ant took hold of it again, carried it to its place, and arranged
it so as to make it firm; then, satisfied with her work, she went
after something else to do. Shortly after this, a head, then some
legs, then half of the body of a caterpillar came out of the living
little fagot which the ant had mended her house with. It was a dead
leaf in which an egg had been laid and nicely rolled up by the
parent, and which my lady ant had taken for a beam, or something of
the sort, and the vexed hermit scampered away, carrying his house
with him, not caring at all for the hole which he and his house had
been intending to mend.

Much amused at this, Piccolissima tried to find out what a great
number of ants, all with burdens, were carrying. She was, with
painful astonishment, soon convinced that these were the carcasses
of all sorts of insects. "It is a nation of hunters," she said,
"more savage than those which feed their flocks on my aspen."

At this moment, a great ant attracted the attention of the child
towards the lower part of the mountain. An enormous grub of the
cockchafer race, a great white worm, rolled himself over, trying to
liberate himself and to crush the ants, whose number increased on
every side, and who tore off his transparent, soft skin, and pulled
him in every direction. They climbed backward up the side of their
citadel, an