408 THE INSECT WORLD. 



body ! She then attains to six inches in length, and weighs as 

 much as thirty thousand workers. By a hideous contrast, the head 

 alone does not increase in size, d d d d (Fig. 383) is an exact 

 representation of this monster. She is always motionless and 

 captive in her cell, entirely occupied in laying. Her fecundity sur- 

 passes all bounds : sixty eggs a minute, more than 80,000 a day. 

 Smeathman is inclined to think that this prodigious laying goes on 

 during the whole of the year. "This soft, whitish beast," says 

 M. Michelet, " a belly rather than a being, is as large, at least, as 

 one's thumb ; a traveller professes to have seen one of the size of a 

 crawfish. The larger she is, the more fruitful, the more inexhaustible, 

 this terrible insect-mother seems to be the more adored by the 

 fanatical rabble. She seems to be their beau ideal, their poetry, their 

 enthusiasm. If you carry away with any rubbish a portion of their 

 city, you see them instantly set to work at the breach to build an arch 

 which may protect the venerated head of the mother, to reconstruct 

 her royal cell, which will become (if there are sufficient materials) the 

 centre, the base of the restored city. I am not astonished, though, 

 at the excessive love which this people show for this instrument of 

 fecundity. If all other species did not combine to destroy them, this 

 truly prodigious mother would make them masters of the world, and 

 — what shall I say ? — its only inhabitants. The fish alone would be 

 left ; but insects would perish. It suffices to be remembered that the 

 mother-bee does not produce in a year what the female white ant can 

 produce in a day. By her they would be enabled to devour every- 

 thing ; but they are weak and tasty, and so everything devours 

 them."* In fact, birds are very greedy after termites ; poultry destroy 

 immense quantities of them. Ants give chase to them and eat them 

 by legions. The negroes in Southern Africa cannot be sated with 

 them. They gather such as have fallen into the water, and roast them 

 like coffee ; thus prepared, they eat them by handfuls, and find them 

 delicious. The Indians smoke the termites' nests, and catch those 

 that have wings. They knead them up with flour, and make a sort 

 of cake of them. Travellers, moreover, all agree in speaking of them 

 as very nice food, comparing their flavour to that of marrow or of a 

 sugared cream. Smeathman prefers them to the famous palm worm 

 {tc?- pabnisie of the colonists), a delicacy known in South America, 

 which is the larva of the Calandra palmanim, a species of beetle. It 

 seems, however, that an abuse of fried termites brings on a dysentery 

 which may prove mortal. 



■' J. Michelet, *'L'Insecte,'* p. 328. 



