. The study of animal life . different,though by no means extraordinary. The queen-mother,however, is a very strange organism. She measures twoto six inches, while the worker is only about a fifth of aninch in length. Like her mate, she sees, and she once hadwings like his, but they have dropped off. The hindpart of the body is enormously distended with eggs, and the head bears about the same proportion to the rest ofthe body as does the tuft on his Glengarry bonnet to a six-foot Highlander. In her passivity and phenomenal cor-pulence, she is a sort of reductio ad absurdum of femaleness— a lar
. The study of animal life . different,though by no means extraordinary. The queen-mother,however, is a very strange organism. She measures twoto six inches, while the worker is only about a fifth of aninch in length. Like her mate, she sees, and she once hadwings like his, but they have dropped off. The hindpart of the body is enormously distended with eggs, and the head bears about the same proportion to the rest ofthe body as does the tuft on his Glengarry bonnet to a six-foot Highlander. In her passivity and phenomenal cor-pulence, she is a sort of reductio ad absurdum of femaleness— a large, cylindrical package, in shape like a sausage, 86 The Study of Animal Life PART I and as white as a bolster. But have some admiration forher : she sometimes lays 60 eggs per minute, or 80,000in a day, and continues reproducing for months. As shelays, she is assiduously fed by the nursing-workers, while theeggs are carried off to be hatched in the nurseries. At thebreeding season, numerous winged males and females leave. Fig. iS.—Diagrammatic section of a termites nest (after Houssay). In the wallsthere are winding passages (/); uppermost is a well-aired empty attic (D)the next story (C) is a nursery where the young termites are hatched onshelves (a) and (b) ; the next is a hall (B) supported by pillars ; beneath thisis a royal chamber (r) in which the king and queen are imprisoned ; aroundthis the chambers of worker-termites {s) and some store-chambers {in) ;excavated in the ground are holes (j) out of which the material used inmaking the termitary was dug. The whole structure is sometimes 10-15feet in height. the hill and its workers in swarms, most of them simply todie, others to mate with individuals from another hill and to begin to form new colonies. The plot of the story becomes more intricate, however,when we notice Fritz IMiillers observations, that besides CHAP. V Social Life of Animals 87 the winged males and females which are produced in vastnumbers, and which
Size: 1742px × 1434px
Photo credit: © Reading Room 2020 / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, bookpublishe, booksubjectzoology
