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Through the breaks light streamed from the level above us. We picked our way among the debris to a wide crumbling stairway, crept up it, Ruth flitting ahead. We came out opposite one of the eye-like apertures.
In weedy places a beautiful butterfly, with eye-like spots on its wings was common, the Junonia Lavinia, the only Amazonian species which is at all nearly related to our Vanessas, the Admiral and Peacock Butterflies. One day, we made our first acquaintance with two of the most beautiful productions of nature in this department namely, the Helicopis Cupido and Endymion.
At her side there crouched a big yellow beast, covered all over with black, eye-like spots, with a big round head, and looking just like a cat, but a hundred times larger than the biggest cat he had ever seen.
Across the wide road people were peering out on all sides, some hiding, others walking to and fro, from fence to fence, whispering in little groups. Down the wide road, at the point where it turned, stood Greaves's fort-like stone house. Low, flat, isolated, with its dark, eye-like windows, it presented a forbidding and sinister aspect.
It was too small for that. Besides, a jaguar would not have been cowed and driven off by a mule. He would more likely have killed the mule, and dragged its body off with him across the river, or perhaps have broken into the house, and done worse. The animal was, no doubt, the "ocelot," which is also spotted, or rather marked with the eye-like rosettes which distinguish the skin of the jaguar.
The bird is so exceedingly shy and wary, and runs along the ground in the densest parts of the forest so quickly, that it is impossible to get near it; and its sober colours and rich eye-like spots, which are so ornamental when seen in a museum, must harmonize well with the dead leaves among which it dwells, and render it very inconspicuous.
The tints of the green carpet faded; and, one by one, the ruby-red asphodels withered away; and there sprang up, in place of them, ten by ten, dark, eye-like violets, that writhed uneasily and were ever encumbered with dew.
As they passed Gertrude raised her head and directed towards the young nobleman two eyes so eye-like in their expression as to be absolutely circular, while Lord Ronald directed towards the occupant of the dogcart a gaze so gaze-like that nothing but a gazelle, or a gas-pipe, could have emulated its intensity. Was this the dawn of love? Wait and see. Do not spoil the story.
The flowers, which are produced in a cluster on the top of the stem, form a crown of bright yellow petals, studded with scarlet eye-like stigmas. Each flower is 2 in. in diameter when fully spread out, cup-shaped, and composed of two or three rows of over-lapping petals.
In a future chapter I shall have occasion to shew that the beautiful eye-like spots, or ocelli, found on the wings of many Lepidoptera, are eminently variable. I may here add that these ocelli offer a difficulty on the theory of sexual selection; for though appearing to us so ornamental, they are never present in one sex and absent in the other, nor do they ever differ much in the two sexes. Mr.
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