WHITE ANTS. 59 



ny ; or for magazines, which are always found well filled 

 with stores and provisions. These hills make their first 

 appearance above ground by a little turret or two in the 

 shape of sugar-loaves, which are run a foot high, or more. 

 Soon after, at some little distance, while the former are in- 

 creasing in height and size, the ants raise others, and so go 

 on increasing the number and widening them at the base, 

 till their works below are covered with these turrets, which 

 they always raise the highest and largest in the middle, 

 and by filling up the intervals between each turret, collect 

 them, as it were, into one dome. They are not very curious 

 or exact about these turrets, except in making them very 

 solid and strong ; and when, by the junction of them, the 

 dome is completed, for which purpose the turrets answer 

 as scaffolds, they take away the middle ones entirely, ex- 

 cept the tops (which, joined together, make the crown of 

 the cupola), and apply the clay to the building of the works 

 within, or to erecting fresh turrets for the purpose of rais- 

 ing the hillock still higher ; so that no doubt some part of 

 the clay is used several times, like the boards and posts of 

 a mason's scaffold. 



The outer shell or dome is not only of use to protect and 

 support the interior buildings from external violence and 

 heavy rains, but to collect and preserve a regular degree 

 of genial warmth and moisture, which seems very ne- 

 cessary for hatching the eggs and cherishing the young 

 ones. The royal chamber, so called on account of its being 

 adapted for, and occupied by, the king and queen, appears 

 to be, in the opinion of this little people, of the most con- 

 sequence, being always situated as near the centre of the 

 interior building as possible, and generally about the height 

 of the common surface of the ground at a pace or two from 

 the hillock. It always resembles the shape of half an egg 

 or an obtuse oval within, and may be supposed to represent 



