INSECTA— TERMITES. 839 



of aisles in perspective, and are soon lost among the innumerable cham- 

 bers and nurseries behind them. 



" All these chambers, and the passages leading to and from them, being 

 arched, they help to support one another ; and while the interior large arches 

 prevent them falling into the centre, and keep the area open, the exterior 

 building supports them on the outside. 



" I have observed before, that there are of every species of termites three 

 orders. Of these, the working insects, or laborers, are always the most nu- 

 merous. In the termites bellicosus, there seem to be at least one hundred 

 laborers to one of the fighting insects or soldiers. The laborers are about 

 one fourth of an inch long, and twenty-five of them weigh about a grain ; 

 so that they are not so large as some of our ants. From their external habit 

 and fondness for wood, they have been very expressively called wood lice. 

 They resemble them, it is true, very much at a distance ; but they run faster 

 than any other insects of their size, and are incessantly bustling about their 

 affairs. 



" The second order, or soldiers, have a very different form from the labor- 

 ers, and have been by some authors supposed to be the males, and the former 

 neuters : but they are, in fact, the same insects as the foregoing, only they 

 have undergone a change of form, and approach one degree nearer to the 

 perfect state. They are noAV much larger, being half an inch long, and equal 

 in bulk to fifteen of the laborers. 



" There is now, likewise, a most remarkable circumstance in the form of 

 the head and mouth ; for in the former state, the mouth is evidently calcu- 

 lated for gnawing and holding bodies ; but in this state, the jaws being shaped 

 just like two very sharp awls a little jagged, they are incapable of any thing 

 but piercing or wounding, for which purposes they are very effectual, being 



as hard as a crab's claw, and placed in a strong, horny head, which is of a 

 nut-brown color, and larger than all the rest of the body together, which 

 seems to labor under great difficulty in carrying it : on which account, per- 

 haps, the animal is incapable of climbing up perpendicular surfaces. 



" The third order, or the insect in its perfect state, varies its form still 

 more than ever. The head, thorax, and abdomen, differ almost entirely from 

 the same parts in the laborers and soldiers ; and, besides this, the animal is 

 now furnished with four large, brownish, transparent wings, with which it is 

 at the time of emigration to wing its way in search of a new settlement. 



