430 
TERMES. 
Ciliated for gnawing and holding bodies; but iii 
this state, the jaws being shaped just like two 
very sharp awls a little jagged, they are incapable 
of any thing but piercing or wounding, for which 
purposes they are very effectual, being as hard as 
a crab’s claw, and placed in a strong horny head, 
which is of a nut-brown colour, and larger than 
all the rest of the body together, which seems to 
labour under great difficulty in carrying it: on 
which account perhaps the animal is incapable of 
climbing up perpendicular surfaces. 
“ The third order, or the insect in its perfect 
state, varies its form still more than ever. The 
head, thorax, and abdomen, differ almost entirely 
from the same parts in the labourers and soldiers; 
and, besides this, the animal is now furnished 
with four fine large brownish, transparent, wings, 
with which it is at the time of emigration to wing 
its way in search of a new settlement. In short, 
it differs so much from its form and appearance in 
the other two states, that it has never been sup- 
posed to be the same animal, but by those udio 
have seen it in the same nest; and some of these 
have distrusted the evidence of their senses. It 
was so long before I met with them in the nests 
myself, that I doubted the information which was 
given me by the natives, that they belonged to the 
same family. Indeed we may open twenty nests 
without finding one winged one, for those are to 
be found only just before the commencement of 
the rainy season, when they undergo the last 
change, which is preparative to their colonization. 
