THE TERMITINiE. 34-3 



or ten feet high ; the nests of others are cylindrical^ and 

 are not more than two feet above the ground, with a 

 roof extending on all sides beyond the lateral walls ; 

 others, again, build in the upper branches of trees, 

 sixty or eighty feet from the ground; and in countries 

 where trees abound, they excavate and occupy their in- 

 terior. These insects always work under cover, and, 

 unless by accident, they are never exposed to sight ; and 

 they thus construct subterranean galleries from their 

 nests, wherever their destructive propensities incline 

 them to wander; and in attacking houses, they eat into 

 its timbers, gnawing their galleries longitudinally in its 

 centre, leaving only the external crust ; and thus, when 

 their depredations have been extensive, not an article of 

 furniture in a house is free from this dilapidation, and 

 upon the least forcible touch, or first wind, all falls to 

 pieces. The fecundity of the females is truly astonish- 

 ing; and she is as much an object of solicitude to the 

 workers, as is the queen among the bees. She and her 

 partner are incarcerated in a cell by the neuters, and 

 they are there regularly supplied with food ; and after 

 impregnation, upon the enlargement of the ovaries, her 

 abdomen swells to the enormous size of 1500 or 2000 

 times the rest of the body; and as soon as she begins to 

 lay eggs, these are conveyed away by the neuters to their 

 prepared cells, which, in conjunction with their maga- 

 zines of provisions, occupy the interior of these nests. 

 It is said that she lays as many as 80,000 of these eggs 

 in the course of twenty-four hours, — a fecundity that 

 would speedily overwhelm the earth, were it not pro- 

 vided that but comparatively few reach maturity, and 

 the great majority serve as food to birds^ and beasts, 

 and fishes; and the natives, also, of the tropical regions 

 where they occur, cook them and eat them as a delicacy. 

 From the great resemblance of their manners to those 

 of ants, they have been called " White Ants." But 

 the true ants are their mortal enemies, and prey upon 

 them with the greatest voracity, especially at the period 

 of their swarmingj at the commencement of the tro- 



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