462 SPANISH TOWN. 



tables, and illustrates their depredations on our canes. 

 There are royal chambers in the hillock-building 

 Termites, surrounded by a countless number of 

 others of different shapes and dimensions, all of them 

 being either arched cells or galleries : these open 

 into each other, or communicate by passages wide 

 enough for the soldiers and attendants, of whom great 

 numbers are necessary and always in waiting. These 

 apartments lead away to the magazines and nurseries. 

 The magazines are chambers of clay, and are always 

 well filled with provisions, which to the naked eye 

 consist of raspings of wood, and of plants which they 

 have destroyed, but are found by the microscope to 

 be principally gums and inspissated vegetable juices. 

 These are thrown together in little masses, some of 

 which are finer than others, and resemble the sugar 

 about preserved fruits; others are like crystallised 

 drops ; one kind are quite transparent, another are 

 like amber, a third brown and clear, and another 

 quite opaque, just as we see ordinary gums are. 

 The magazines are intermingled with the nurseries, 

 which are buildings totally different from the rest of 

 the apartments. They are composed entirely of 

 wooden materials cemented together. Smeathrnan 

 calls them nurseries because they are hivariably 

 occupied by the eggs and young ones, which appear 

 at first in the shape of those called labourers, white 

 as snow. We may perceive in this description of a 

 colony of Termites, the purpose for which they esta- 

 blish themselves in our cane-fields. They are there 

 abundantly supplied with those inspissated juices, 

 which resemble the sugar of preserved fruits on 



