296 . INSECT MISCELLANIES, 



like state prisoners. We may remark, however, that 

 each colony possesses only one male and female, 

 which are, it would appear, elected after taking wing. 



" Some," says Smeathman, " being found by the 

 labouring insects that are continually running about 

 the surface of the ground under their covered galleries, 

 are elected kings and queens of new states; all those 

 which are not so elected and preserved, perish. The 

 manner in which these labourers protect the happy 

 pair from their innumerable enemies, not only on the 

 day of the massacre of almost all their race, but for a 

 long time after, will, I hope, justify me in the use of 

 the term election. The little industrious creatures 

 immediately enclose them in a small chamber of clay* 

 suitable to their size, into which at first they use but 

 one entrance, large enough for themselves and the 

 soldiers to go in and out, but much too little for 

 either of the royal pair to use ; and, when necessity 

 obliges them to make more entrances, such entrances 

 are never larger, so that the voluntary subjects 

 charge themselves with the task of providing for the 

 offspring of their sovereigns, as well as of working 

 and fighting for them, until they have raised a pro^ 

 geny capable of at least dividing the task with 

 them f. " 



The king and queen, after having been enclosed 

 in this solitary cell, never afterwards quit it, but are 

 kept close prisoners. The abdomen of the queen 

 soon begins to enlarge, stretching out like a bag, till 

 it becomes nearly two thousand times the size of her 

 body. Smeathman says, he has seen it five inches 

 long, of an irregular oval shape J, and containing a 

 countless number of eggs, of which she has been ob- 

 served to lay as many as sixty. in a minute. Instinct 



* See Insect Architecture, p. 292, 3. 



f Phil. Trans, vol. Ixxi. 

 J See Figure in Insect Architecture, p. 293. 



