314 DIVISION III ARTICULATED ANIMALS.—CLASS IV. INSECTA. 
rush out as fast as the breach will permit them, their numbers increasing as 
Jong as any one continues to batter the building. During this time, they 
are in the most violent bustle and agitation, some being employed in beating 
with their forceps upon the building, so as to make a noise, which may be 
heard at three or four feet distance. On ceasing to disturb them, the sol- 
diers retire, and are succeeded by the laborers, who hasten in various direc- 
tions towards the breach, each with a burden of mortar in his mouth, ready 
tempered. Though there are millions of them, they never stop or embarrass 
each other; and a wall gradually arises to fill up the chasm. <A soldier 
attends every six hundred or one thousand laborers, seemingly as a director 
of the works; for he never touches the mortar, either to lift or to carry it. 
One in particular places himself close to the wall under repair, and fre- 
quently makes the above-mentioned noise, which is constantly answered by 
a loud hiss from all the laborers within the dome; and at every such signal, 
they evidently redouble their pace, and work as fast again. 
The work being completed, a renewal of the attack constantly produces 
the same effects. The soldiers again rush out, and then retreat, and are 
followed by the laborers loaded with mortar, and as active and as diligent 
as before. Thus the pleasure of seeing them come out to fight or work 
alternately, Mr. Smeathman observes, may be obtained as often as curiosity 
excites, or time permits ; and it will certainly be found the one order never 
attempts to fight, nor the other to work, let the emergency be ever so great. 
The obstinacy of the soldiers is remarkable: they fight to the very last, dis- 
puting every inch of ground so well as often to drive away the negroes, who 
are without shoes, and make white people bleed plentifully through their 
stockings. Such is the strength of the buildings erected by these puny 
insects, that, when they have been raised to little more than half their 
height, it is the constant practice of the African wild bulls to stand as sen- 
tinels upon them, while the rest of the herd are ruminating below. When 
at their full height of ten or twelve feet, they are used by Europeans as look- 
out stations, whence they can see over the grass, which, in Africa, is, on an 
average, of the height of thirteen feet. But perhaps the most wonderful, 
and, at the same time, best authenticated, part of the history of these curious 
insects is, that which relates to the queen, or mother of the community, in 
her pregnancy. 
After impregnation, a very extraordinary change begins to take place in 
her person, or rather in her abdomen only. It gradually increases in bulk, 
and at length becomes of such an enormous size as to exceed the bulk of the 
rest of her body fifteen hundred or two thousand times. She becomes two 
thousand times heavier than her consort, and exceeds twenty thousand or 
thirty thousand times the bulk of one of the laborers. In this state eighty 
