408 THE INSECT WOBLI). 



inch long, the body soft, and of an extreme delicacy, but the sharp 

 mandibles capable of attacking the hardest bodies. The soldiers 

 are twice as long, and weigh as much as fifteen workers, and may 

 be distinguished by their enormous horned head, armed with sharp 

 pincers. The male weighs as much as thirty workers, and attains 

 to a length of nearly four-fifths of an inch. 



But the pregnant female leaves all these dimensions far behind. 

 Her abdomen becomes two thousand times as big as the rest 

 of her 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. 381) is an 

 exact representation of this monster. She is always motionless 

 and captive in her cell, entirely occupied in laying. Her fecundity 

 surpasses all bounds : sixty eggs a minute, more than eighty 

 thousand a day. Smeathman is inclined to think that this pro- 

 digious 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 vene- 

 rated 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 pro- 

 digious 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 everything; but they are weak and tasty, and so every- 

 thing devours them."* I n f ac t, birds are very greedy after ter- 

 mites ; poultry destroy immense quantities of them. Ants give 

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



