Candles on Bushes
In parts of Colombia candles in the form of white, wax-like berries grow on bushes. These berries produce oil of such excellent quality that it is used almost exclusively for altar lamps in Catholic churches throughout the country.
The berries grow abundantly on a jungle plant with leaves like those of rhubarb. In only one part of the country is the plant cultivated. It is a crop of the semi-hostile Paez Indians. Harvesting is somewhat difficult because the oil-containing white seed is inside a burred coat. This must be removed and the seeds placed in hot water. The oil rises to the surface where it can be skimmed off.
When it is desired to make candles a dozen or more berries are strung on a stick. Such a candle gives off a beautiful, soft light.
The Desert Rat Manufactures Water
All animals require water in their bodies, but some can get it without actually drinking. The desert rat which lives among the bare sand dunes of California’s Death Valley, can get along indefinitely without water and with only dry barley seeds for food. In spite of this about 65 percent of its body weight is water. Most of the water is actually made in the animal’s body. The rat’s digestive processes extract the hydrogen contained in the barley seeds and combine it with oxygen in the air to create water.
The Caste System of the Termite
The oldest civilization on earth is that of the termites. The super-organization which these blind white creatures of the dark have achieved precedes by thousands of millenia those of the ants and the bees. Termites have a far longer history on earth, being considered modifications of the ancient cockroaches who were among the first insects to leave any traces of their existence on land. Cockroaches swarmed in the club moss forests at least 250,000,000 years ago. The termite order is at least 30 million years old; some of its most primitive forms still are alive.
In most of the approximately 2,000 species of termites which have been identified all over the world there are five castes, apparently determined from birth although not so rigidly as among ants. First are the winged males and females with large brains and eyes and hard, dark shells. These depart in great swarms from the ancestral nest once or twice a year, usually in spring and fall. They are feeble flyers and depend chiefly on transportation by air currents. The majority are eaten by birds. The few surviving pairs from such a flight excavate cells in the earth or in wood and start new colonies. There is at least one king and one queen in each cell. Sometimes there are two or more pair. They remain partners for life. Both are imprisoned within the cell. Before entering it they slough off their wings, which henceforth would be worthless.
The termite queen becomes an inert, egg-laying machine, sometimes the size of a small potato. In some species she lays an average of sixty eggs a minute, or 80,000 a day. She may live as long as ten years. Thus each queen ideally produces about a half billion new individuals. Her bulk increases as much as 50-fold in adult life—about the most phenomenal growth in nature.