WHITE ANTS. 69 



resembles the undulation of waves, and continues inces- 

 santly without any apparent effort of the animal ; so that 

 one part or other is alternately rising and falling in per- 

 petual succession, and the matrix seems never at rest, 

 but is always protruding eggs, to the number of sixty in 

 a minute in old queens, or eighty thousand and upwards 

 in one day of twenty-four hours. These eggs are instant- 

 ly taken from the body of the queen by her attendants, 

 ( of whom there always are, in the royal chamber and 

 the galleries adjacent, a sufficient nvnnber in waiting), and 

 carried to the nurseries, some of which in a large nest 

 may be four or five feet distant, in a straight line, and con- 

 sequently much farther by their winding galleries. Here, 

 after they are hatched, the young are attended and provid- 

 ed with every thing necessary, until they are able to shift 

 for themselves, and take their share of the labours of the 

 community. 



The working and the fighting insects never expose them- 

 selves to the open air, but either travel under ground, or 

 within such trees and substances as they destroy, except 

 indeed when they cannot proceed by their latent passages, 

 and find it convenient or necessary to search for plunder 

 above ground. In that case they make pipes of the mate- 

 rial with which they build their nests. The larger sorts 

 use the red clay, the turret-builders use the black clay, and 

 those which build in trees employ the same ligneous sub- 

 stances of which their nests are composed. With these 

 materials they completely line most of the roads leading 

 from their nests into the various parts of the country, and 

 travel out and home with the utmost security in all kinds of 

 weather. If they meet with a rock or any other obstruction, 

 they will make their way upon the surface ; and for that 

 purpose erect a covered way or arch, still of the same ma- 

 terials, continuing it with many windings and ramifications 



