400 ANIMAL STRENGTH. 



50,000. But, above all, the white ant (Termes fat alls) 

 produces 86,400 eggs each day, which, continuing for a 

 lunar month, gives the astonishing number of 2,419,200, 

 a number far exceeding that produced by any known 

 animal. 



These may appear like the statements in which a 

 fictionist might indulge, but they are the sober truths 

 discovered by the most pains-taking and cautious 

 observers. And it is necessary that such conditions 

 should prevail. These insects, and all the lower tribes 

 of the animal kingdom, furnish food for the more 

 elevated races. Thousands are born in an hour, and 

 millions upon millions perish in a day. For the sup- 

 port of organic life, like matter is required ; and we 

 find that the creatures who are destined to become the 

 prey of others are so constituted that they pass from 

 life with a perfect unconsciousness of suffering. As the- 

 animal creation advances in size and strength, their 

 increase becomes limited ; and thus they are prevented 

 from maintaining by numbers that dominion over the 

 world which they would be enabled from their powers 

 to do, were their bands more numerous than we now 

 find them. 



The comparative strength, too, of the insect tribes has 

 ever been a subject of wonder and of admiration to the 

 naturalist. The strength of these minute creatures is 

 enormous ; their muscular power, in relation to their 

 size, far exceeds that of any other animal. The grass- 

 hopper will spring two hundred times the length of its 

 own body. The dragonfly, by its strength of wing, will 

 sustain itself in the air for a long summer day with 

 unabated speed. The house-fly makes six hundred 

 strokes with its wings, which will carry it five feet, 

 every second. The stag-beetle, were it the size of the 

 elephant, would be able to tear up the largest mountains. 



Such are the wonders of the natural world; from the 



