CH. VIII.] THE WHITE ANT. 151 



her body, and twenty or thirty thousand times the 

 bulk of a labourer. 



The skin between the segments is distended in 

 every direction ; and at last the segments are re- 

 moved to the distance of half an inch from each 

 other, though at first the length of the whole abdo- 

 men is not half an inch ; they preserve their dark 

 brown colour, and the upper part of the abdomen is 

 marked with a regular series of brown bars from 

 the thorax to the posterior part of the abdomen; 

 while the intervals between them are covered with 

 a thin, delicate, transparent skin, and appear of a 

 fine cream-colour, a little shaded by the dark hue 

 of the intestines and watery fluid seen here and 

 there beneath. 



Smeathman conjectures that the animal must be 

 upwards of two years old when the abdomen is thus 

 increased to three inches in length : he has some- 

 times found them of nearly twice that size : the ab- 

 domen is then of an irregular oblong shape, being 

 contracted by the muscles of every segment, and is 

 become one vast matrix full of eggs, which make 

 long circumvolutions through an innumerable series 

 of very minute vessels. This singular matrix is 

 not more remarkable for its amazing extension than 

 for its peristaltic motion, which resembles the un- 

 dulation of waves, and continues incessantly with- 

 out any apparent effort on the part of the animal ; 

 so that there is a constant protrusion of eggs to the 

 amount, as Smeathman has frequently counted in 

 the case of old queens, of sixty in a minute, or 

 eighty thousand and upwards in twenty-four hours. 

 These eggs are instantly removed by her attend- 

 ants, of which a sufficient number is always found 

 waiting in the adjacent chambers, and carried to the 

 nurseries, which, in a great nest, may be four or five 

 feet distant, in a direct line, and consequently much 

 farther by the winding galleries which conduct to 

 them. 



