At the commencement of this kidnapping of children, we had expected to see some such spectacle as a razzia of slaves, which is only too common among both men and ants. But we now understood that something more was meditated. In drawing them cruelly from their outer coat, which is to them the very necessity of life, it became too evident that their captors cared very little whether they lived or did not live. It was for their flesh they seized them; as a tender prey for the young ones they had left at home, the fat children being delivered up alive to the furious appetites of the lean!
To understand the horror of the scene, you must know the true nature of the large eggs of the ants,—improperly called eggs, but in reality their nymphs or chrysalides,—diminutive organized ants which, under a thin veil, strengthen their tender, delicate, and still soft existence. They remain in this envelope for the purpose of accomplishing a progress of successive solidification and colouring.
The very fine and wonderfully soft web which they weave for themselves is, as we know, of a dull white, lightly shaded with a delicate yellow, which, when stronger, turns into a nankeen tint. Open it shortly before the emergence of the perfect insect, and you find a being of exactly the same colour, all folded and rolled up in itself like the human embryo in its mother's womb. When stretched out, the aspect of the future ant is easily recognized, but it singularly differs from it in character: the head is quite innocent; lift up the antennæ, which, in this condition, resemble ears, and the young white head reminds you of that of a little white rabbit. The eyes alone,—two black points,—marked with sufficient prominency, indicate the next stage of colouring. For the rest, there is nothing to forewarn you that this little, weak, and denuded animal, so touching and so interesting, will become in a few days the black being so full of energy, so keen with life, so fierce in blood, which will traverse the earth in a fury of labour and burning activity.
One comprehends that in this stage of existence the milky and succulent nymphs of the ants will prove a very appetizing dish for the bird, and for the infinite number of creatures which hunt them greedily.
I have dissected only one nymph in the last days of its nymph-period, and when near its time of hatching. But that one was sufficient. The sight (seen through a lens of twelve times magnifying power) was very painful. The being was completely formed, and already black on the belly, yellow on the corselet. The head was intelligent, like that of an old ant, but pale, and changing from yellow to black. Still weak and heavy, and seized, as it were, with vertigo, it rolled from right to left, and from left to right, with a singular effect of somnolence and pain. You might have supposed it to be saying: "Ah me! so soon! Why hast thou called me so cruelly, before the proper hour, from my soft cradle to the harsh drudgery of life? But it is all at end for me!" It struggled nevertheless to confront the unknown chances of its novel situation, and to disengage its trammelled limbs. The antennæ were already perfectly free, and stirred about in their anxiety to discern the new world; this cerebral organ revealed very plainly the disquietude and agitation of the brain. Its greatest perplexity arose from its failure to release its two arms (or anterior limbs). It laboured violently to do so. They were glued to the body by an indescribable something which might be called a pale blood, and one sweated to see the poor little creature, already prudent and timid, unable to complete its offensive arrangements, and to extricate (apparently to snatch or pluck away) its two bleeding arms.
I have explained this at some length, in order to make the reader understand the passionate interest felt by the ants in the little balls which, to our eyes, seem so insignificant. Beneath its soft and transparent tissue they feel the infant palpitating under its two touching forms,—the creature, denuded and innocent, which dreameth still—the creature already formed and intelligent, perceiving everything, but incapable of self-defence, and, before it sees the light, disturbed by all the fears and agitations of existence.
The most painful shock for the young of the insects is the sudden cold; at least, the nudity, the exposure to the air and light. This is so antipathetic and painful to them, that in certain species it is the source of their arts and their most ingenious devices. The eggs and nymphs of the ants in their tiny transparent swaddling-robe,—and still more the larvæ which are deprived of it,—feel with an excessive sensibility every atmospheric variation. Hence the delicate and continual attentions of their nurses in carrying them from place to place, in translating them from one to another of the well-contrived steps of their thirty or forty stories, in protecting their dear little chilly charge from cold, damp, or excessive heat. A degree more or less means for it life or death.
It is a cruel and tragical change for these children of love, spoiled hitherto with excessive indulgence, and tended with greater care than any princess, when they are abruptly deprived of their garments,—stripped, with blows from pincers, teeth, and claws,—and despoiled by the hands of the executioner. Suddenly exposed to the burning sun, dragged hither, pushed thither, rolled over all the roughnesses of a coarse sandy soil,—sensible, infinitely sensible, in their new condition of nakedness, to the shocks, blows, and rude somersaults which their violent enemies do not spare them!
In towns captured by a furious enemy, it has happened that the tombs of the dead have been desecrated. But here, we behold the exhumation of the living,—the despoiling of innocent and all vulnerable creatures, poor bits of skinless flesh, to whom the very lightest touch had been a sufficient agony!