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The leader of the ant hill, followed by whole hosts of his six-legged subjects, approached the heap, and with the utmost diligence, taking grain by grain, they separated the pile, sorting each kind to its parcel; and when it was all done, they vanished out of sight in a moment. Venus at the approach of twilight returned from the banquet of the gods, breathing odors and crowned with roses.
We are a long time reaching the ant-city, but it would be quite an insult to the Insect-family to give no thought to the most wonderful thing about it the "transformations" by which many of its six-legged members pass through their three distinct stages of existence; so it will be well to turn over a few pages in the story of the Butterfly, one of the family-branch called Lepidoptera, because its wings are covered with thousands of tiny scales, which enclose the colouring that makes them as softly tinted as the flowers upon the nectar of which it feeds.
The log would soon be black, when once the heat got a fair hold of it. Now, the pent-up steam from some secret core, that had kept its moisture through the warmth of a summer, hissed out in an angry jet, stung by the conquering flame. There, see! from some concealment in the bark, mysteriously safe till now, a six-legged beetle, panic-struck and doomed.
We have five fingers and five toes, though only four limbs. Locomotion is mechanical and even numbers serve better than odd. Hence the six-legged insects. In the inorganic world things attain a stable equilibrium, but in the living world the equilibrium is never stable. Things are not stereotyped, hence the danger of dogmatizing about living things. Growing Nature will not be driven into a corner.
From the egg which the parent May-fly drops into the water, a six-legged grub is very soon hatched. This grub proceeds forthwith to excavate for himself a home in the soft bank of the river, below the surface of the water, and there remains for two long years, feeding upon the decaying matters of the mould.
No living thing could long remain motionless within the sphere of influence of these six-legged Boches, and yet I intended to spend days in close proximity. There was no place to hang a hammock, no overhanging tree from which I might suspend myself spider-wise. So I sent Sam for an ordinary chair, four tin cans, and a bottle of disinfectant.
The leader of the ant-hill, followed by whole hosts of his six-legged subjects, approached the heap, and with the utmost diligence taking grain by grain, they separated the pile, sorting each kind to its parcel; and when it was all done, they vanished out of sight in a moment. Venus at the approach of twilight returned from the banquet of the gods, breathing odors and crowned with roses.
Only, from ignorance of the laws of the universe, they did not know what was likely to be true and what was not; and therefore they believed many things which experience has proved to be false; just as Seba or any of the early naturalists were ready to believe in six-legged dragons, or in the fatal power of the basilisk's eye; fancies which, if they had been facts, would not have been nearly as wonderful as the transformation of the commonest insect, or the fertilization of the meanest weed: but which are rejected now, not because they are too wonderful, but simply because experience has proved them to be untrue.
Many of my readers may be interested to know what the ant-lion is like, and why I thought it worth while to take great pains to rear it. These young specimens were flat, grey, six-legged creatures about the size of a small lady-bird, covered with hairs, and possessing two strong forceps projecting from their heads.
Supposing, instead of wolves, an airship of super-terrestrial proportions had brought an army of ten-armed, four-headed, and six-legged creatures, bent on dealing out death to the occupants of the trenches, what would have happened? They might come armed with new atmospheric weapons, trailing clouds of suffocating fumes to which resistance with guns and bombs would be utterly ineffectual.
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