316 Insect Architecture. 



drags them to its nest for food for its young brood. If any 

 accident breaks down part of their walls, they repair the 

 breach with all speed. Instinct guides them to perform 

 their office in the creation, by mostly confining their attacks 

 to trees that are beginning to decay, or such timber as has 

 been severed from its roots for use, and would decay in time. 

 Vigorous, healthy trees do not require to be destroyed, and 

 accordingly, these consumers have no taste for them.* 



M. Adanson describes the termites of Senegal as con- 

 structing covert ways along the surface of wood which they 

 intend to attack ; but though we have no reason to distrust 

 so excellent a naturalist, in describing what he saw, it is 

 certain that they more commonly eat their way into the 

 interior of the wood, and afterwards form the galleries, when 

 they find that they have destroyed the wood till it will no 

 longer afford them protection. 



But it is time that we should come to their principal 

 building, which may, with some propriety, be called a city ; 

 and, according to the method we have followed in other 

 instances, we shall trace their labours from the commence- 

 ment. We shall begin with the operations of the species 

 which may be appropriately termed the Warrior (Termes 

 fatalis, LINN.; T. bellicosus, SMEATH.). 



We must premise, that though they have been termed 

 white ants, they do not belong to the same order of insects 

 with our ants ; yet they have a slight resemblance to ants in 

 their form, but more in their economy. Smeathman, to 

 whom we owe our chief knowledge of the genus, describes 

 them as consisting of kings, queens, soldiers, and workers, 

 and is of opinion that the workers are larvae, the soldiers 

 nymphaB, and the kings and queens the perfect insects. In 

 this opinion he coincides with Sparrmann t and others ; but 

 !Latreille is inclined to think, from what he observed in a 

 European species (Termes lucifugus) found near Bordeaux, 

 that the soldiers form a distinct race, like the neuter workers 

 among bees and ants, while the working termites are larva3,J 



* Smeathman. t Quoted by De Geer, vol. vii. 



J Hist. Nat. Generate, vol. xiii. p. 66. 



