HABITATIONS OF INSECTS. 287 
under-ground, near to the surface, toa vast distance. At their entrance 
into the interior they communicate with other smaller galleries, which 
ascend the inside of the outer shell in a spiral manner, and, winding round 
the whole building to the top, intersect each other at different heights, 
opening either immediately into the dome in various places, and into the 
lower half of the building, or communicating with every part of it by other 
smaller circular or oval galleries of different diameters. The necessity for 
the vast size of the main under-ground galleries evidently arises from the 
circumstance of their being the great thoroughfares for the inhabitants, by 
which they fetch their clay, wood, water, or provision; and their spiral 
and gradual ascent is requisite for the easy access of the Termites, which 
cannot but with great difficulty ascend a perpendicular. To avoid this 
inconvenience, in the interior vertical parts of the building, a flat pathway, 
half an inch wide, is often made to wind gradually, like a road cut out of 
the side of a mountain, by which they travel with great facility up ascents 
otherwise impracticable. The same ingenious propensity to shorten their 
labour seems to have given birth toa contrivance still more extraordinary. 
This is a kindof bridge of one vast arch, sprung from the floor of the area 
to the a apartments at the side of the building, which answers the 
purpose of a flight’ of stairs, and must shorten the distance exceedingly in 
transporting eg@s from the royal chambers to the upper nurseries, which in 
some hills would be four or five feet in the straightest line, and much 
more if carried through all the winding passages which lead through the 
inner chambers and apartments. Mr. Smeathman measured one of these 
bridges, which was half an inch broad, a quarter of an inch thick, and ten 
inches long, making the side of an elliptic arch of proportionable size, so 
that it is wonderful it did not fall over or break by its own weight before 
they got it joined to the side of the column above. It was strengthened 
by a small arch at the bottom, and had a hollow or groove all the length 
of the upper surface, either made purposely for the greater safety of the 
passengers, or else worn by frequent treading. It is not the least 
surprising circumstance attending this bridge, the Gothic arches before 
spoken of, and in’ general all the arches of the various galleries and 
apartments, that, as Mr. Smeathman saw every reason for believing, the 
Termites project their arches, and do not, as one would have supposed, 
excavate them. 
Consider what incredible labour and diligence, accompanied by the most 
unremitting activity and the most unwearied celerity of movement, must be 
necessary to enable these creatures to accomplish, their size considered, 
these truly gigantic works That such diminutive insects, for they are 
scarcely the fourth of an inch in length, however numerous, should, in the 
space’ of three or four years, be able to erect a building twelve feet high and 
of a proportionable bulk, covered by a vast dome, adorned without by 
numerous pinnacles and turrets, and sheltering under its ample arch my- 
tiads of vaulted apartments of various dimensions, and constructed of 
different materials —that they should moreover excavate, in different 
directions and at different depths, innumerable subterranean roads or 
tunnels, some twelve or thirteen inches in diameter, or throw an arch of 
Stone over other roads leading from’ the metropolis into the adjoining 
country to the distance of several hundred feet —that they should project 
and finish the, for them, vast interior staircases or bridges lately desernbed — 
