The Swarm 
houses bringing provisions, and even from 
the depths of the country laden with pre- 
sents. One can only assume that these 
persons must be indispensable to the race, 
to which they render essential service, 
although our means of investigation have 
not yet enabled us to discover what the 
precise nature of this service may be. There 
are others, again, who are incessantly en- 
gaged in the most wearisome labour, whether 
it be in great sheds full of wheels that 
forever turn round and round, or close by 
the shipping, or in obscure hovels, or on 
small plots of earth that from sunrise to 
sunset they are constantly delving and 
digging. We are led to believe that this 
labour must be an offence, and punishable. 
For the persons guilty of it are housed in 
filthy, ruinous, squalid cabins. They are 
clothed in some colourless hide. So great 
does their ardour appear for this noxious, 
or at any rate useless, activity, that they 
scarcely allow themselves time to eat or to 
sleep. In numbers they are to the others 
as a thousand to one. It is remarkable that 
the species should have been able to survive 
53 
