64 HISTORY OF INSECTS. 



dred yards of your house, the inhabitants of those which 

 are unmolested farther oif, will nevertheless carry on their 

 subterranean galleries, and invade the goods and merchan- 

 dize contained in it, by undermining them, and do great 

 mischief, if you are not very circumspect. 



But to return to the cities from whence these extraordi- 

 nary expeditions and operations originate : it seems there 

 is a degree of necessity for the galleries under the hills be- 

 ing thus large, as they are the great thoroughfares for all 

 the labourers and soldiers going forth or returning upon 

 any business whatever, whether fetching clay, wood, water, 

 or provisions ; and they are certainly well calculated for 

 the purposes to which they are applied, by the spiral slope 

 which is given them ; for if they were upright, the labour- 

 ers would not be able to carry on their building with so 

 much facility, as they ascend perpendicularly with great 

 difficulty, and the soldiers can scarcely do it at all. It is on 

 this account that a road like a ledge is sometimes made on 

 the perpendicular side of any part of the building within 

 their hill ; this road is flat on the upper surface, and half 

 an inch wide, ascending gradually like a staircase, or like 

 those roads which are cut on the sides of hills and moun- 

 tains which would otherwise be inaccessible; by this and 

 similar contrivances, they travel with great facility to every 

 internal part. This too is probably the cause of their build- 

 ing a kind of bridge, of one vast arch, which answers the 

 purpose of a flight of stairs from the floor of the area to 

 some opening on the side of one of the columns supporting 

 the large arches, an arrangement which must shorten the 

 distance exceedingly to those labourers who have to carry 

 the eggs from the royal chamber to some of the upper nur- 

 series, a distance which, in some hills, would be four or 

 five feet in the most direct line, and much more if carried 

 through all the winding passages leading through the inner 



