434 
TfiRMES. 
them in a small chamber of clay suitable to thesf 
size, into which at first they leave but one small 
entrance, large eno-ugh for themselves and the 
soldiers- to go in and out, but much too little foi? 
either of the royal pair to make use of j and when 
necessity obliges them to make more entrances, 
they are never larger 3 so that, of course, the vo- 
luntary subjects charge themselves with the task 
of providing for the odspring of their sovereigns, 
as well as to work and to fight for them until they 
shall have raised a progeny capable at least of di- 
viding the task wdth them. 
“ About this time a most extraordinary change 
begins to take place in the queen, to which I 
know nothing similar, except in. the Piilcx pene- 
trans of Linn^us, the Jigger of the West Indies, 
and in the different species of Coccus, Cochineal. 
The abdomen of this female begins gradually to 
extend and enlarge to such an enormous size, that 
an old queen will have it increased so as to be fif- 
teen hundred or two thousand times the bulk of 
the rest of her body, and twenty or thirty thou- 
sand times tlMJ bulk of a labourer, as I have found 
by carefully weighing and computing the different 
states. The skin between the segments of the 
abdomen extends in every direction; and at last 
the segments are removed to half an inch distance 
from each other, though at first the length of the 
whole abdomen is not half an inch. They pre- 
serve their dark brown colour, and the upper jiart 
of the abdomen is marked with a regular series of 
brown bars from the thorax to the posterior part 
