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1 What are commonly called ants' eggs, are in reality their larvæ and nymphæ. Enveloped in a sort of tunic, these last, Cuvier says, are like grains of corn, and from this probably has arisen the story that they lay up grains against the winter, a period through which in reality they do not eat.
2 They stow away bits of meat and detached portions of fruit, to nourish their larvæ with their juices.
3 It is in reality their larvæ that they thus bring out to dry. The working ants, or neutrals, are the ones on which these labours devolve; the males and females are winged, the working ants are without wings.
4 "Ad recognitionem mutuam."
5 Some modern writers express an opinion that when they meet, they converse and encourage one another by the medium of touch and smell.
6 See B. v. c. 31.
7 M. de Veltheim thinks that by this is really meant the Canis corsac, the small fox of India, but that by some mistake it was represented by travellers as an ant. It is not improbable, Cuvier says, that some quadruped, in making holes in the ground, may have occasionally thrown up some grains of the precious metal. The story is derived from the narratives of Clearchus and Megasthenes. Another interpretation of this story has also been suggested. We find from some remarks of Mr. Wilson, in the Transactions of the Asiatic Society, on the Mahabharata, a Sanscrit poem, that various tribes on the mountains Meru and Mandara (supposed to lie between Hindostan and Tibet) used to sell grains of gold, which they called paippilaka, or "ant-gold," which, they said, was thrown up by ants, in Sanscrit called pippilaka. In travelling westward, this story, in itself, no doubt, untrue, may very probably have been magnified to its present dimensions.
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- Lewis & Short, tempestīvĭtas