Slow Signal Fade ebooks

If the top
of a small, fresh hillock, one in which the thatching process is
going on, is taken off, a broad cylindrical shaft is disclosed at
a depth of about two feet from the surface. If this is probed
with a stick, which may be done to the extent of three or four
feet without touching bottom, a small number of colossal fellows
(Fig. 3) will slowly begin to make their way up the smooth sides
of the mine. Their heads are of the same size as those of the
class Fig. 2, but the front is clothed with hairs, instead of
being polished, and they have in the middle of the forehead a
twin, ocellus, or simple eye, of quite different structure from
the ordinary compound eyes, on the sides of the head. This
frontal eye is totally wanting in the other workers, and is not
known in any other kind of ant. The apparition of these strange
creatures from the cavernous depths of the mine reminded me, when
I first observed them, of the Cyclopes of Homeric fable. They
were not very pugnacious, as I feared they would be, and I had no
difficulty in securing a few with my fingers.


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