324 HABITATIONS OF INSECTS. 



Mr. Smeathman saw every reason for believing, the Termites project their 

 arches, and do not, as one would have supposed, excavate them. 



Consider what incredible labor and diligence, accompanied by the 

 most unremitting activity and the most unwearied celerity of movement, 

 must be necessary to enable these creatures to accomplish, their size con- 

 sidered, these truly gigantic works. That such diminutive insects, for 

 they are scarcely the fourth of an inch in length, however numerous, 

 should, in the space of three or four years, be able to erect a building twelve 

 feet high and of a proportionable bulk, covered by a vast dome, adorned 

 without by numerous pinnacles and turrets, and sheltering under its ample 

 arch myriads of vaulted apartments of various dimensions, and constructed 

 of different materials — that they should moreover excavate, in different 

 directions and at different depths, innumerable subterranean roads or 

 tunnels, some twelve or thirteen inches in diameter, or throw an arch of 

 stone over other roads leading from the metropolis into the adjoining 

 country to the distance of several hundred feet — that they should project 

 and finish the, for them, vast interior stair-cases or bridges lately described — 

 and, finally, that the millions necessary to execute such Herculean labors, 

 perpetually passing to and fro, should never interrupt or interfere with 

 each other, is a miracle of nature, or rather of the Author of nature, far 

 exceeding the most boasted works and structures of man : for, did these 

 creatures equal him in size, retaining their usual instincts and activity, 

 their buildings would soar to the astonishing height of more than half a 

 mile, and their tunnels would expand to a magnificent cylinder of more 

 than three hundred feet in diameter ; before which the pyramids of Egypt 

 and the aqueducts of Rome would lose all their celebrity, and dwindle 

 into nothings.^ So that when in the commencement of my last letter I 

 promised to introduce you to insects whose labors produced edifices more 

 astonishing than those of the mightiest Egyptian monarchs, the pyramids, 

 my promise, whatever you then thought of it, was the reverse of hyper- 

 bolical. 



I am, Sic. 



' The most elevated of the pyramids of Egypt is not more thaa 600 feet high, which? 

 setting the average height of man at only five feet, is not more than 120 times the height 

 of the workmen employed. Whereas the nests of the Termites being at least twelve feet 

 high, and the insects themselves not exceeding a quarter of an inch in stature, their edifice 

 is upwards of 500 times the height of the builders; which, supposing them of human 

 dimensions, would be more than half a mile. The shaft of the Roman aqueducts was lofty 

 enough to permit a man on horseback to travel in them. 



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