PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 309 



nurseries. Her abdomen now begins gradually to extend, till in process 

 of time it is enlarged to 1500 or 2000 times the size of the rest of her 

 body, and her bulk equals that of 20,000 or 30,000 workers. This part, 

 often more than three inches in length, is now a vast matrix of eggs, 

 which make long circumvolutions through numberless slender serpentine 

 vessels : it is also remarkable for its peristaltic motion (in this resembling 

 the female ant 1 ), which, like the undulations of water, produces a per- 

 petual and successive rise and fall over the whole surface of the abdomen, 

 and occasions a constant extrusion of the eggs, amounting sometimes in 

 old females to sixty in a minute, or eighty thousand and upwards in twenty- 

 four hours. 2 As these females live two years in their perfect state, how 

 astonishing must be the number produced in that time ! 



This incessant extrusion of eggs must call for the attention of a large 

 number of the workers in the royal chamber (and indeed it is always full 

 of them), to take them as they come forth and carry them to the nurseries ; 

 in which, when hatched, they are provided with food, and receive every 

 necessary attention till they are able to shift for themselves. One remark- 

 able circumstance attends these nurseries they are always covered with 

 a kind of mould, amongst which rise numerous globules about the size of a 

 small pin's head. This is probably a species of Mucor, and by Mr. Konig, 

 who found them also in nests of an East India species of Termes, is con- 

 jectured to be the food of the larvae. 



The royal cell has, besides some soldiers in it, a kind of body-guard to 

 the royal pair that inhabit it: and the surrounding apartments contain 

 always many, both labourers and soldiers in waiting, that they may succes- 

 sively attend upon and defend the common father and mother, on whose 

 safety depend the happiness and even existence of the whole community, 

 and whom these faithful subjects never abandon even in their last distress. 



The manner in which the Termites feed the young brood before they 

 commence their active life and. are admitted to share in the labours of the 

 nest, has not, as far as I know, been recorded by any writer. I shall, 

 therefore, leave them in their nurseries, and introduce you to the bustling 

 scene which these creatures exhibit in their first state after they are become 

 useful. To do this, in vain should I carry you to one of their nests you 

 would scarcely see a single one stirring though, perhaps, under your feet 

 there would be millions going and returning by a thousand different ways. 

 Unless I possessed the power of Asmodeus in Le Diable Boiteux, of show- 

 ing you their houses and covered ways \fith their roofs removed, you 

 would return home as wise as you came ; for these little busy creatures 

 are taught by Providence always to work under cover. If they have to 

 travel over a rock or up a tree they vault with a coping of earth the route 

 they mean to pursue, and they form subterranean paths and tunnels, some 

 of a diameter wider than the bore of a large cannon, on all sides from 

 their habitation to their various objects of attack ; or which sloping down 

 (for they cannot well mount a surface quite perpendicular) penetrate to 

 the depth of three or four feet under their nests into the earth, till they 

 arrive at a soil proper to be used in the erection of their buildings. Were 

 they, indeed, to expose themselves, the race would soon be annihilated by 



1 Gould's Account of English Ants, 22. 



2 John Hunter dissected two young queens. In the abdomen he found two 

 ovaries, consisting of many hundred oviducts, each containing innumerable eggs. 



x 3 



