HABITATIONS OF INSECTS. 287 



under-ground, near to the surface, to a vast distance. At their entrance 

 into the interior they communicate with other smaller galleries, which 

 ascend the inside of the outer shell in a spiral manner, and, winding round 

 the whole building to the top, intersect each other at different heights, 

 opening either immediately into the dome in various places, and into the 

 lower half of the building, or communicating with every part of it by other 

 smaller circular or oval galleries of different diameters. The necessity for 

 the vast size of the main under-ground galleries evidently arises from the 

 circumstance of their being the great thoroughfares for the inhabitants, by 

 which they fetch their clay, wood, water, or provision ; and their spiral 

 and gradual ascent is requisite for the easy access of the Termites, which 

 cannot but with great difficulty ascend a perpendicular. To avoid this 

 inconvenience, in the interior vertical parts of the building, a flat pathway, 

 half an inch wide, is often made to wind gradually, like a road cut out of 

 the side of a mountain, by which they travel with great facility up ascents 

 otherwise impracticable. The same ingenious propensity to shorten their 

 labour seems to have given birth to a contrivance still more extraordinary. 

 This is a kind of bridge of one vast arch, sprung from the floor of the area 

 to the upper apartments at the side of the building, which answers the 

 purpose of a flight of stairs, and must shorten the distance exceedingly in 

 transporting eggs from the royal chambers to the upper nurseries, which in 

 some hills would be four or five feet in the straightest line, and much 

 more if carried through all the winding passages which lead through the 

 inner chambers and apartments. Mr. Smeathman measured one of these 

 bridges, which was half an inch broad, a quarter of an inch thick, and ten 

 inches long, making the side of an elliptic arch of proportionable size, so 

 that it is wonderful it did not fall over or break by its own weight before 

 they got it joined to the side of the column above. It was strengthened 

 by a small arch at the bottom, and had a hollow or groove all the length 

 of the upper surface, either made purposely for the greater safety of the 

 passengers, or else worn by frequent treading. It is not the least 

 surprising circumstance attending this bridge, the Gothic arches before 

 spoken of, and in general all the arches of the various galleries and 

 apartments, that, as Mr. Smeathman saw every reason for believing, the 

 Termites project their arches, and do not, as one would have supposed, 

 excavate them. 



Consider what incredible labour and diligence, accompanied by the most 

 unremitting activity and the most unwearied celerity of movement, must be 

 necessary to enable these creatures to accomplish, their size considered, 

 these truly gigantic works. That such diminutive insects, for they are 

 scarcely the fourth of an inch in length, however numerous, should, in the 

 space of three or four years, be able to erect a building tw r elve feet high and 

 of a proportionable bulk, covered by a vast dome, adorned without by 

 numerous pinnacles and turrets, and sheltering under its ample arch my- 

 riads of vaulted apartments of various dimensions, and constructed of 

 different materials that they should moreover excavate, in different 

 directions and at different depths, innumerable subterranean roads or 

 tunnels, some twelve or thirteen inches in diameter, or throw an arch of 

 stone over other roads leading from the metropolis into the adjoining 

 country to the distance of several hundred feet that they should project 

 and finish the, for them, vast interior staircases or bridges lately described 



