ENTOMOLOGY. 



are so ill defined, that each half of the cell will be shaped 

 like the outside of that shell which is called the Sea Ear. 



Each cell has two or more entrances, and as there are 

 galleries communicating with passages erected under ground 

 oh each side, they have in a great measure a certain place 

 of escape to which they can retire when their principal house 

 is destroyed. But to return to the Cities from whence these 

 extraordinary expeditions and operations originate, it seems 

 there is a degree of necessity for the galleries under the hills 

 being thus large, being the great thoroughfares for all the 

 labourers and soldiers going forth or returning from business, 

 the fetching of clay, wood, water or provisions; and they 

 aTe certainly well calculated, for the purposes to which they 

 are applied, by the spiral slope which is given them, for if 

 they were perpendicular the labourers would not be able to 

 carry on the building with so much facility, as they ascend 

 a perpendicular with great difficulty, and the soldiers can 

 scarce do it at all. It is on this account that sometimes a 

 road like a ledge is made on the perpendicular side of part 

 of the building, within the hill, like those roads which are 

 sometimes cutout of the sides of mountains, which would be 

 otherwise inaccessible, by which and similar contrivances 

 they travel with great facility to every part. 



It has been observed before that of every species of Ter- 

 mites there are three orders, of these the working insects or 

 labourers seem to be most numerous, and in the Termes Bel- 

 licosus there seems to be about one hundred labourers to one 

 soldier or fighting insect. They are in this state about a 

 quarter of an inch long, and from their external habits and 

 fondness for wood have been not inexpressively called Wood 

 Lice, by which name the French know them. They resem- 

 ble them it is true very much at a distance, but they run as 



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