258 HABITATIONS OF INSECTS. 
and, finally, that the millions necessary to execute such Herculean labours, 
perpetually passing to and fro, should never interrupt or interfere with 
ah other, is a miracle of nature, or rather of the Author of nature, far 
exceeding the most boasted works and structures of man : for, did these 
creatures equal him in size, retaining their usual instincts and activity, 
their buildings would soar to the astonishing height of more than half’, 
mile, and their tunnels would expand to a magnificent cylinder of more than 
three hundred feet in diameter ; before which the pyramids of Egypt and 
the aqueducts of Rome would lose all their celebrity, and dwindle into 
nothings.*_ So that when in the commencement of my last letter I pro- 
mised to introduce you to insects whose labours produced edifices more 
astonishing than those of the mightiest Egyptian monarchs, the pyramids, 
my promise, whatever you then thought of it, was the reverse of hyper- 
bolical. . ~ 
Iam, &c. 
1 The most elevated of the pyramids of Egypt is not more than 600 feet high, 
which, setting the average height of man at only five feet, is not more than 120 
times the height of the workmen employed. Whereas the nests of the Termites 
being at least twelve feet high, and the insects themselves not exceeding a quarter 
of an inch in stature, their edifice is upwards of 500 times the height of the 
builders; which, supposing them of human dimensions, would be more than half a 
mile. The shaft of the Roman aqueducts was lofty enough to permit a man on 
horseback to travel in them. 
Addition to the note on Scolytus destructor, p. 122. 
Since writing the note above referred to upon Scolytus destructor, I have seen in 
passing through Paris to Italy, so striking an instance of the way in which the 
ittle beetle to which it refers has revenged the neglect and contempt thrown upon 
its class by destroying in a great degree the effect of one of the most vaunted and 
costly productions of modern architecture, that the fact may be worth recording as 
an instructive warning for the future, The avenue of elms connecting the Place de 
la Concorde and Champs Elysées with the Barritre de l’Btoile leading to Neuilly, 
St. Germains, &c., has always been described as the most magnificent approach to 
Paris, and was on that account selected by Napoleon for the entrée of his new 
empress Marie-Louise, and as the site, at its most elevated point, of the “ Arc de 
‘Triomphe,” commemorating his victories and companions in arms, of which he laid 
the foundations, but which has only recently been completed at a vast expense. It 
is needless to point out how essentially the effect of this splendid monument of art 
must depend upon the size, health, and beauty of the lines of trees connecting it 
with those which occupy the Champs Elysées, and garden of the Tuileries; yet at 
this time (September 10. 1842) there are lying from twenty to thirty of their finest 
elms very lately cut down, in consequence of having died from the attacks of Sco- 
tyti ; and as many others had been previously removed and replaced by young 
trees, and the full-grown ones offer, from their dead tops, the numerous holes in 
their bark, and the oozing sap, ample proof that their pigmy but effective assailants 
are silently at work on the rest, it is evident that the whole avenue is eventually 
doomed to destruction, and that a century must elapse before it can resume that 
grandeur which it might have retained for ages had the economy of these insects 
been understood, and the proper measures for extirpating them taken at the outset. 
It has been well observed, that in many cases a palace had better be burnt than the 
fine old trees that surround and ornament it destroyed, as the former may bo 
