SAMOUELLi; S 



tion takes place, begin to inclose their new rulers 

 in a .small chamber of clay, before described, suited 

 to their size, the entrances to which are only large 

 enough to admit themselves and the neuters, but 

 much too small for the royal pair to pass through ; — 

 so that their state of royalty is a state of confine- 

 ment, and so continues during the remainder of their 

 existence. The impregnation of the female is snp- 

 posed to take place after this confinement, and she 

 soon begins to furnish the infant colony with new 

 inhabitants. The care of feeding her and her male 

 companion devolves upon the industrious larva), who 

 supply them both with every thing that they want. 

 increases in dimensions, they keep enlarging 

 the cell in which she is detained. When the busi- 

 ness of oviposition commences, they take the eggs 

 from the female, and deposit them in the 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 circumvolu- 

 tions through numberless slender serpentine vessels : 

 — it is also remarkable for its peristaltic motion, (in 

 this resembling the female ant,) which like the un- 

 dulations of water, produces a perpetual and suc- 

 cessive rise and fall over the whole surface of the abdo- 

 men, 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. As these females live two years in their 

 perfect state, how astonishing must be the number 

 produced in that time!" 



