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 her highly complex and many-faceted organs of vision, it was only a cool gloom, very soothing to her sensitive nerves after the glare of the outside world. Still descending—and passing on the way, with a touch of the antennae, many acquaintances and comrades—she came to the doorway of a wide but low-roofed chamber, with a watchful guard at the entrance. Here were about a hundred of the whitish so-called ant eggs—in reality pupæ, almost mature, in their frail cocoons—all ranged carefully in the center of the chamber and with a couple of guardians walking about among them. They had been brought up from the safe depths of the citadel to absorb the tempered but vitalizing warmth in this apartment near the surface, and were being watched with special sohcitude because they were very near the time for their emergence as full-grown ants.

Formica merely glanced in upon them, exchanging greetings with the guards, and continued her way down to the cooler and moister depths. Here she turned into another spacious chamber, its low ceiling supported by several irregular columns of compacted earth. Here and there about the center of the chamber were little clusters of the ant grubs, or larvæ, sorted carefully according to their age and size, each cluster attended by several diligent nurses who were kept