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Updated: May 7, 2025
Soft and boneless and formless, contained only by the dirty-white, membranous skin, it did appear a tempting target for a spear thrust. And now, sluggish with its meal, it seemed less alert and on guard. Jim went on with his thought. "I think you scientists are wrong about all the termites having intelligence," he whispered. "I believe that thing has the only reasoning mind in the mound.
There were termites in that vast storeroom, too; but they were specialized creatures, such as termitary life abounds in, that were so distorted as to be hardly recognizable as termites.
A massive foreleg dropped from one of the guards, to crash to the floor. Whether or not the acid was able to set on the horny exterior of the termites, it was as deadly to their soft interiors as to any other sort of flesh! The acid had found the joint of that foreleg and had eaten through it as hot iron sinks through butter!
Off in a corner they saw two more termites standard worker types, standing motionless side by side, with a queer sort of mushroom growth linking them together a large, gray-white ball borne mutually on their backs. But that was all. The listing of those two workers concluded the roll-call of termites in the chamber as far as the two men could see. And the two were just ordinary workers.
Occasionally spots of fresh earth are observed which have been turned up by the bears in search of some favourite root. They feed also on the termites and ants.
It would be the perfect state of society." "Maybe but I'm glad I'll be dead before that times comes," said Jim with another shiver. By now the wall ahead of them was complete. On the other side of it the soldier termites stolidly fought on to their certain death. On the near side, the workers retreated to unknown depths in the great hollow mountain behind them.
There are ten species of Termites, or white ants, some of gigantic size, and large dragon- flies with speckled wings, like those of the Southern States in North America; there are also grasshoppers of considerable size, and even the Lepidoptera are not unrepresented.
"I am speaking quite seriously," I hastened to add; "termites, like bees and ants, the latter of which they much resemble at first sight, live in communities, and build nests which are often larger than the one you are looking at. This nest, skillfully divided into cells, contains a king, a queen, workmen, and soldiers.
His perch commanded a full view of the operations of the termites, and for a long time he sat watching them with interest. He could see that it was not the same set that were always on the carcasses of the ais. On the contrary, one host were always leaving the spot, while another took their places, and from the great conical houses fresh bands appeared to issue.
Among the mammalia we perceive one marked example in the beavers, the only one in the great class of the rodents, with their nine hundred or more of species. But we must go still lower, to the insects, for the most striking examples, finding them alone in the ants, the bees, and the termites, among the vast multitude of insect forms.
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