Bie DIVISION III. ARTICULATED ANIMALS.— CLASS IV. INSECTA. 
it happens, that scarcely a pair of the many millions of this unhappy race 
find a place of safety to fulfil the first law of nature, and lay the foundation 
of anew community. In this state, many fall into the neighboring waters, 
and are eaten with avidity by the Africans, who roast them in the manner 
of coflee, and find them delicate, nourishing, and wholesome. 
The few fortunate pairs who survive this annual massacre and destruc- 
tion, being casually found by some of the laborers, who are constantly run- 
ning about on the surface of the ground, are elected kings and queens of 
new states. Those who are not so elected and preserved, certainly perish, 
and most probably in the course of the following day. By these industrious 
creatures, the king and queen elect are immediately protected from their 
innumerable enemies, by enclosing them in a chamber of clay, where the 
propagation of the species soon commences. Their voluntary subjects then 
busy themselves in constructing wooden nurseries, or apartments, solely 
composed of wooden materials, seemingly joined together with gums. Into 
these they afterwards carry the eggs produced by the queen, lodging them 
as fast as they can obtain them from her. Plausible reasons are given by 
Mr. Smeathman for the belief he entertains, that they here form a kind of 
garden for the cultivation of a species of microscopical mushroom; and in 
this belief he is supported by Mr. Konig, in his essay on the Kast Indian 
Termites, by whom also this is conjectured to be the food ef the young 
insects. 
These wonderful creatures construct works which surpass those of the 
bees, wasps, beavers, and other animals, as much at least as those of the 
most polished nations excel those of the least cultivated savages. Even 
with regard to man, his greatest works, the boasted pyramids, fall com- 
paratively far short, even in size alone, of the structures raised by these 
insects. The laborers among them employed in this service are not a 
quarter of an inch in length; but the structures which they erect rise, as 
has already been observed, to the height of ten or twelve feet and upwards 
above the surface of the earth. Supposing the height of a man to be six 
feet, this author calculates that the buildings of these insects may be con- 
sidered, relatively to their size, and that of a man, as being raised to nearly 
five times the height of the greatest of the Egyptian pyramids; that is, 
corresponding with considerably more than half a mile. It may be added, 
that, with respect to the interior construction, and the various members and 
dispositions of the parts of the buildings, they appear greatly to exceed that 
or any other work of human construction. 
The most striking parts of these structures are the royal apartments, the 
nurseries, magazines of provisions, arched chambers and galleries, with 
their various communications; the ranges of the Gothic-shaped arches, 
