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compact paste composed of fine particles of wood, gum, and juices of plants.

For some years past two species of this kind have been established in France, and have caused very serious havoc. The devouring cohorts of the light-shunning termite have invaded several towns, where their fangs have completely undermined a number of houses which have fallen in. At one time these hateful depredators set to work to gnaw the prefecture of La Rochelle and the archives, without any person suspecting it; wainscotting, pasteboard, papers, were all annihilated without any external sign of this havoc appearing. At present the papers of the bureaux are only preserved by keeping them in zinc boxes. At another place the termites, having gnawed away the props of a diningroom without its being perceived, the flooring collapsed during a party, and the entertainer and his guests sank through.

In tropical regions there are ants of other species which are not less to be dreaded than the devouring termites. They do not annihilate houses, but they invade the fields and build there enormous nests which look like so many little mountains fifteen to twenty feet high. They multiply to such an extent in certain plantations, that the colonist is obliged to abandon them. Sometimes, however, he resists the invaders, declares a war of extermination against them, and fires their dwellings by the aid of some combustible materials. Sometimes artillery charged with grape-shot is employed to overthrow the lofty ramparts of these ants, and scatter both the ruins and the architects.

Thus is man obliged to attack an insect with the cannon.

Sometimes

he resorts to the mine, a step he is compelled to take against certain winged ants in the tropical countries, which sink their nests twenty-five feet in the ground, and these are so compact that they can only be torn up by the aid of powder, and by overturning all the earth round about them. Müller relates that in Brazil, entire provinces on the banks of the Parana have been in this way transformed almost into deserts.

CHAPTER XX.

MUSEUM OF REMARKABLE INSECTS.

Anatomy of Insects Superior to that of Man-Curiously Formed Eggs-Lifting the Lid and Stepping Out-Not Taking the Trouble to be Born-Eggs Exquisitely Decorated-Sexless Insects-Flying Lamps-Insects Illuminating DwellingsBrilliant Appearances-Beetles-The Sacred Beetle of Egypt-Insect Undertaker-Death Watch-Droll Superstition-Hercules Beetle-Six Years' Impris onment-The House Cricket-Poet's Address-Ship Saved by a Cricket-How the Chirping is Done-Wings Without Flight-The Spider's Web-Ingenious Mechanism-Water Spider-How Air is Obtained-A Complete Diving Bell-Rapacious Bird Spider-Females Practicing Cannibalism on their Husbands-Children Devouring Mothers-Thread of Myriads of Fibres-The Great Moth Family-Death's-Head Moth-Fungus Growing on an Insect's Head-Ravagers of the Forest-Visit to the Woods-Whirlwind of Fire-Waging Organized War on Moths-Incalculable Destruction by Mites-Stenographers, Carpenters, Joiners, Carvers among Insects-Wood Boring Goat Moth-Making a Place for Eggs-The Historic Locust-Ravages in the West-Flights of Devastation-Where Locusts Come From-Devouring One Another-Rapid Growth of Young-Orchestra of Strange Instruments-Return after Seventeen Years-No Forgetfulness-Ephemera-Creatures of a Day Described-Bees and their Remarkable Habits-Insect Intelligence.

JUR heart, the structure of which is so admired and so admirable, is nevertheless only a very coarse forcing-pump compared with that of an insect. All the apparatus of the central organ of circulation is limited to two large openings, each furnished with two valves or valvelets, intended to prevent the reflux of the blood; but if, by the aid of the solar microscope, we project all the transparent body of an insect upon a huge screen, one is astonished at the magnificent spectacle offered by the movement of the blood.

The heart is represented by a long vessel which occupies all the back. of the animal, and into which the circulating fluid precipitates itself by eight or ten lateral openings, like small streams converging towards a more impetuous current. Enough valves rise and fall to allow entrance to the fluid and hinder its return. In the interior of this lengthened heart larger valvules, to the number of six or eight, are folded back against the wall to let the blood pass forward, and re-open directly afterwards, during each contraction, in order to prevent its flowing backwards. Vessels arranged in loops are distributed to all the members.

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The course of the blood in the colossal insect seen upon the screen resembles so many little streams bearing globules more or less heaped up; this is proved by the strictest evidence, and yet who would believe that Cuvier and his school would never credit this phenomenon? Instead of looking, which was so easy, they preferred to deny the circulation in the insect, and to regard its wonderful heart as a simple secreting vessel shaken by contractile shocks. It is thus that physiological science advances; a hundred battles are requisite to make men admit the most easily verified truth.

This extraordinary construction extends even to the eggs of insects. There are some, the extremity of which is surmounted by a crown of points; others exactly represent a delicate miniature saucepan, the young inhabitant of which, in order to be born, has only to lift up the lid.

The egg of the louse, which disgusts us so much, presents this curious structure, but in addition its opening is embellished by a little projecting rim, and a groove into which the edge of the cover enters in such a manner as to close it air-tight. A still more ingenious mechanism is seen in some of the wood-bugs. The young insect does not even require to lift the lid; there is within a regular spring on which this office devolves; at the moment of birth he has only to emerge, and one may say with justice of him, that he does not even take the trouble to be born.

Eggs Painted and Delicately Engraved.

The surface of these eggs is often remarkable on account of the exquisite fineness of its entwined ornamenting. Some are covered with large ribs which extend from one end to the other; others display only fine lines artistically engraved; others again have the surface covered with a mesh of lace. For them nature has exhausted the riches of her palette; they are dyed with the sweetest or the most glittering tints of blue, green, and red; some absolutely resemble mother-of-pearl, and there are some that one might take for so many charming little pearls.

The sexuality itself of insects offers some curious particulars. There are not only males and females among them, but some of their republics have, in addition, individuals absolutely deprived of sex; these are the neuters, which alone work and constitute the element of their prosperity and power. Some are true workmen, others valiant soldiers. But these individuals, which we recognize by their form or their particular weapons, are in truth only aborted females; the bees themselves know this perfectly.

To all these marvels of insect life we must yet add the inexplicable phenomenon of the dazzling light which they project into the midst of darkness, which sometimes in their flight furrows the air with long

streams of fire, and sometimes peacefully illuminates the foliage on which they repose.

Every person knows the glow-worm which in the autumn gives our green turf the appearance of a starry heaven. But in South America there are phosphorescent insects of far superior splendor. The great lantern-fly can supply the place of a lamp with the bright light with which its monstrous head gleams. A female traveller relates that at Surinam she sometimes read the newspapers by the aid of a single one of these flying lamps.

Living Lamps in Dwellings.

In the Antilles the phosphorescence of these insects is even made daily use of; they employ there a luminous beetle the corslet of which becomes dazzling in the gloom. In Cuba the women often inclose several of them in little cages of glass or wood, which they hang up in their rooms, and this living lustre throws out sufficient light to serve to work by. Travellers there also, in a difficult road, light their path in the middle of the night by attaching one of these beetles to each of their feet. The creoles sometimes set them in the curls of the hair, where, like resplendent jewels, they give a most fairy-like aspect to their heads. The negresses at their nocturnal dances scatter these brilliant insects over the robes of lace which nature provides for them, all woven from the bark of the lagetto. In their rapid and lascivious movements they seem enveloped in a robe of fire. It is the conflagration of Dejanira without the horror.

The perfect female of a beetle, destitute of wings and elytra, with which the male fly is furnished, kindles her light, which issues from the last three segments of her body, and is of a beautiful sulphur color, and always puts it out between eleven and twelve o'clock, shining no more for the rest of the night.

A very extensive group of beetles is known by about 2,000 species in the collections of naturalists. They are distinuished from others by peculiarities of the antennæ, which terminate in a large club or knob, and this also varies considerably in form. To this genus belongs the sacred beetle of the Egyptians. It is about one inch long, or rather more, and of a black color. It is met with not only in Egypt, but in the south of France, Spain, and Italy, and seems to be diffused all over Africa, as far south as the Cape of Good Hope. The ancient Egyptians held that it was sacred to the sun; and, regarding it as typical of that luminary, which is the source of light, heat, and all abundance, looked upon it as the emblem of fertility in general. Representations of it are frequent among

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