Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1890-11-09
WONDERFUL STORIES
From Fields of Natural History, As
tronomy and Philosophy.
THE FLY HAS THOUSANDS OF EYES.
Mosquitoes First Swim, Then They Sail,
and Finally They Fly.
FRANKLIN'S EXPERIMENT REPEATED
WRITTEN FOR THE DISPATCH,

neurological creature with hundred eyes.
He mad queer habit of sleeping with 90 OF
his eyes open, and for this reason he was
selected to watch 10, another NEUROLOGICAL
character. But scheme was successfully
used to lull all of Argus eyes to sleep by
flute music. For this nap Argus lost his
head. His eyes were then transplanted into
peacock's tail, and there you can see them
in our day.
So much for mythology--now for fact.
II you will stop reading for an instant
and cast your eyes about the room, you will
probably see a real, tangible. live animal
that has 40 times more eyes than Argus
was reputed to have. This animal is the
common house-fy. You know some of the
strange things about this little creature.
For instance, you know that he is inclined
to be entirely too familiar in warm weather.
You know, too, that he can walk on the
| ceiling of your room back downward, just
as well as he can walk on the floor. Possi-
bly, you know that he has six feet to walk
with. and that he is full sized and mature
when born-that is, he is a transformed
worm.
THE LITTLE FELLOWS EYES.
But there are some things about the
house-fy that you probably don't know.
In all the strange work OF nature there Is
hardly anything more wonderful than the
eyes of this familiar little insect. You have
noticed, probably, that the two apparent
eyes of the fly are relatively very large.
Well, each of these apparent eyes, as we
find by examination with the microscope, is
what naturalists call compound eye-that
is, it is made up OF a great number of little
eyes, with each of which The little creature
sees. Argus was a pauper, in eve wealth,
compared with our little friend the house
fly.
Another familiar little creature, in some
respects more wonderful than the fly, is the
ant. You know a good deal about this tiny
animal, although there are many kinds OF
them that you have never seen. There is
the large black ant, who sometimes takes
fancy for nip of human flesh, though his
bite is neither dangerous nor very painful.
Then there is the very little red ant that
you may possibly find in the sugar bowl
unless your grocer is both keen-eyed and
careful. But there are many very strange
things about ants that you probably have
never heard of. For instance, did you ever
see an ant fy? No? Well, both male and
female ants fly. But ants have no wings,
you mentally retort. No, not the ants that
you have seen scampering about. But the
fathers and the mothers of these scampering
ants had wings.
THE ANTS THAT WORK.
Just here we have one of the strangest
things in animate nature. The children of
ants are mostly what are called "neuters"-
without sex-and they have no wings.
These are the working ants. They have
compound eyes like the house-fy, but their
parents, the flyers, have both compound
and single eyes. Nature seems to have pro-
vided tne compound eyes for certain insects
in order that their nearby vision may be
very keen, and then the single, or long
range eye, is sometimes given in addition.
The social life of the ant family is some
thing marvellous. They build houses with
'all the modern improvements. These
houses, whether underground or in mounds,
have regular passage-Ways, rooms divided
with architect-like easctness. places for
storing food, and so forth. The work of
gathering food, guarding the houses, caring
for the sick, and the like, are suggestive OF
almost human intelligence. The strength
of the ant is amazing. Tests have been
made wherein an ant carried IL times its
own weight. That is equivalent to a man of
average size carrying nearly ton. But
ants are not always simply curious or won
derful Insects. In some countries they are
often match for a man in the struggle for
68lSleHce. LII GuIdnd, we are IOlQ Dy LraV-
elers, the ants build villages with houses
sometimes 90 feet high. The little animals
multiply so fast that they swarm over the
surrounding country, infesting houses in
myriads, attacking domestic animals and
even human beings, SO that settlers are
sometimes compelled to flee for their lives.
But the ants in our latitude behave better.
They are often an annoyance, and occasion
ally nuisance, but they are always an in
teresting study.
FISH, A SAILOR, A BIRD.
1t is needless to ask whether you have
heard the music and felt the lancet of the
mosquito. 1t is a littl, nuisance, sure
enough. but it is so wonderful in some re-
spects that in studying it we can almost for
get the music and the nip. 1t is not far out
of the way to say that the mosquito is at first
a fish, then sailor and afterward a bird.
Anyway, he successfully swims, sails and
flies.
The mother mosquito lays eggs in stag
nant water. These eggs produce the "wrig-
glers' that you may have seen. The "wrig-
glers" have no gillS like fish, and so they
have to come to the surface OF the water to
breathe. Righ; here we find one of the
queerest of all queer things. The mosquito
breathes through his tail That Is, the air
is taken in through tube of hairs situated
'wriggler" gets to the proper age he stops
on the surface Of the water and apparently
rips the back seam of his skin. The SIX in on
the back cracks open, and the mosquito
which you know so we'll is seen. But he is
not yet strong enough to fly, so he STAYS in
the old skin, which is now a sort of mos
quito gondola, and sails about until he is
strong enough to fly away and begin his
blood-sucking career.
THE MOON IS A GHOST.
Do you know that the moon, which looks
so bright and beautiful on a clear evening,
is the only dead object you see in the
heavens? This is true. The best authori-
ties all agree that the moon has passed
through all the stages that our earth has
reached, and, furthermore, that its internal
fire is all burned out, its water and air
gone, and that it is now really ghost of
what it once was. Whether animal life
eve- existed on the moon or not is some
thing that we shall probably never know.
But there is no apparent reason why men |
may not once have lived there. Astrono-
mers see mountains, extinct volcanoes, val |
leys, and what seem to be the beds of seas |
or oceans. Thousands of years ago long
before man appeared upon the earth, the |
; "Man in the Moon" may have been living
being, and possibly he may have levelled
his telescope at the earth, just as astrono-
mers now gaze at our ghostly satellite.
You have noticed that the moon and the
sun are apparently nearly the same size, but
there is a mighty difference 1t would take
more than 100, 900, 900 moons to make body
as large as the sun. Here is an illustration: