68 HISTORY OF INSECTS. 



carry the eggs and lodge them there as fast as they can ob- 

 tain them from the queen. 



About this time a most extraordinary change begins to 

 take place in the queen, to which we have nothing similar, 

 except in the jigger of the West Indies ( Pulex penetrans 

 of Linneus), and in the different species of Coccus (cochi- 

 neal). The abdomen of this female begins gradually to 

 extend and enlarge to such an enormous size, that in an old 

 queen it will increase so as to become fifteen hundred or 

 two thousand times the bulk of the rest of her body, and 

 twenty or thirty thousand times the bulk of a labourer, as 

 will be found on carefully weighing and computing the dif- 

 ferent states. The skin between the segments of the abdo- 

 men extends in every direction ; and at last the segments 

 are removed to half an inch distance from each other, al- 

 though at first the length of the whole abdomen 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 throughout its entire length, while the inter- 

 vals between them are covered with a thin, delicate, trans- 

 parent skin, and appear of a fine cream colour, a little 

 shaded by the dark colour of the intestines and watery fluid 

 seen here and there beneath. The animal is supposed to be 

 upwards of two years old when the abdomen is increased 

 to three inches in length ; and they are sometimes found 

 nearly twice that size. The abdomen is now of an irregu- 

 lar 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 quan- 

 tity of very minute vessels that circulate round the inside 

 in a serpentine manner, which would exercise the ingenu- 

 ity of a skilful anatomist to dissect and develope. This 

 singular matrix is not more remarkable for its amazing 

 extension and size, than for its peristaltic motion, which 



