. The bee and white ants, their manners and habits; with illustrations of animal instinct and intelligence. Bees; Instinct; Termites. THE WHITE ANTS. caterpillar or maggot of the palm-tree snout beetle, -whioli is served up at all the luxurious tables of West Indian epicures, particularly of the French, as the greatest dainty of the Western World. 14. Troops of workers, apparently deprived of their king and queen, which are constantly prowling about, occasionally encounter one of these pairs, to which they offer their homage, and seem to elect them as the sovereigns of their community, or the
. The bee and white ants, their manners and habits; with illustrations of animal instinct and intelligence. Bees; Instinct; Termites. THE WHITE ANTS. caterpillar or maggot of the palm-tree snout beetle, -whioli is served up at all the luxurious tables of West Indian epicures, particularly of the French, as the greatest dainty of the Western World. 14. Troops of workers, apparently deprived of their king and queen, which are constantly prowling about, occasionally encounter one of these pairs, to which they offer their homage, and seem to elect them as the sovereigns of their community, or the parents of the colony which they are about to establish. All the individuals of such a swarm, who are not so fortunate as to become the objects of such an election, eventually perish under the attacks of the enemies above mentioned, and probably never survive the day which follows the evening of their swarming. 15. So soon as this election has been made, the workers begin to enclose their new rulers in a small chamber of clay, suited to their size, the entrances to which are only large enough to admit themselves and the soldiers, but much too small for the royal pair to pass through, so that their state of royalty is a state of confine- ment, and so continues during the remainder of their lives. 16. The impregnation of the female is supposed to take place after this confinement, and she soon begins to furnish the infant colony with new inhabitants. The care of feeding her and her male companion devolves upon the workers, who supply them both with every thing that they want. As she increases in dimensions, they keep enlarging the cell in which she is detained. When the business of oviposition commences, they take the eggs from the female, and deposit them in the nurseries. Her] abdomen now begins gradually to extend, till, in process of time, it is enlarged to 1500 or 2000 times the size of the rest of her body, and her bulk equals that of 20000 or 30000 workers. 17. A drawing o
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1870, booksubjectbees, booksubjectinst
