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Updated: June 7, 2025
Another excellent case for investigation is offered by the ocelli on the wing-feathers of the Argus pheasant, which are shaded in so wonderful a manner as to resemble balls lying loose within sockets, and consequently differ from ordinary ocelli.
Nuthatch, of Japan, intelligence of; Indian. Obedience, value of. Observation, powers of, possessed by birds. Occupations, sometimes a cause of diminished stature; effect of, upon the proportions of the body. Ocelli, absence of, in female Mutilidae. Ocelli of birds, formation and variability of the. Ocelot, sexual differences in the colouring of the. Ocyhaps lophotes. Odonata.
Having carefully dissected several specimens of these workers, I can affirm that the eyes are far more rudimentary in the smaller workers than can be accounted for merely by their proportionally lesser size; and I fully believe, though I dare not assert so positively, that the workers of intermediate size have their ocelli in an exactly intermediate condition.
In the same wing-feather of the Argus pheasant dark spots may be seen surrounded by a pale zone, and white spots by a dark zone. Thus the formation of an ocellus in its most elementary state appears to be a simple affair. By what further steps the more complex ocelli, which are surrounded by many successive zones of colour, have been generated, I will not pretend to say.
It is more soberly coloured on the upper side than the last-named, being chiefly white and brown, but the underside is more beautiful, having a row of five red ocelli with black irides on each wing and other pretty markings. The lyccenides, or "blues," are represented by no less than 154 species, several of them of surpassing beauty.
It is hard as leather, a glossy greenish black, convex above and flat below, long and slender, with a diameter increasing gradually from the head to the hinder extremity of the metathorax, after which it rapidly diminishes. Its head is a trifle longer than it is wide and is slightly dilated at the base; it is pale-red near the mouth and darker about the ocelli.
If we picture to ourselves a progenitor of the peacock in an almost exactly intermediate condition between the existing peacock, with his enormously elongated tail-coverts, ornamented with single ocelli, and an ordinary gallinaceous bird with short tail-coverts, merely spotted with some colour, we shall see a bird allied to Polyplectron that is, with tail-coverts, capable of erection and expansion, ornamented with two partially confluent ocelli, and long enough almost to conceal the tail- feathers, the latter having already partially lost their ocelli.
For the workers of Myrmica have not even rudiments of ocelli, though the male and female ants of this genus have well-developed ocelli. I may give one other case: so confidently did I expect occasionally to find gradations of important structures between the different castes of neuters in the same species, that I gladly availed myself of Mr.
They extend in two vast, oval patches from the center of the top of the cranium down either side of the head to below the roots of the horns, so that these weapons really grow out from the lower part of the eyes, which are composed of several thousand ocelli each.
I should add that on the secondary wing-feather farthest from the body all the ocelli are smaller and less perfect than on the other feathers, and have the upper part of the ring deficient, as in the case just mentioned.
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