‘ 
PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 309 
nurseries. Her abdomen now begins gradually to extend, till in process 
of time it is enlarged to 1500 or 2000 times the size of the rest of her 
body, and her bulk equals that of 20,000 or 30,000 workers. This part, 
often more than three inches in length, is now a vast matrix of eggs, 
which make long circumyolutions through numberless slender serpentine 
vessels: it is also remarkable for its peristaltic motion (in this resembling 
the female ant’), which, like the undulations of water, produces a per- 
petual and successive rise and fall over the whole surface of the abdomen, 
and occasions a constant extrusion of the eggs, amounting sometimes in 
old females to sixty in a minute, or eighty thousand and upwards in twenty- 
four hours.?_ As these females live two years in their perfect state, how 
astonishing must be the number produced in that time! 
This incessant extrusion of eggs must call for the attention of a large 
number of the workers in the royal chamber (and indeed it is always full 
of them), to take them as they come forth and carry them to the nurseries ; 
in which, when hatched, they are provided with food, and receive every 
necessary attention till they are able to shift for themselves—One remark- 
able circumstance attends these nurseries — they are always covered with 
akind of mould, amongst which rise numerous globules about the size of a 
small pin’s head, This is probably a species of Mucor, and by Mr. Konig, 
who found them also in nests of an East India species of Termes, is con- 
jectured to be the food of the larvae. 
The royal cell has, besides some soldiers in it, a kind of body-guard to 
the royal pair that inhabit it: and the surrounding apartments contain 
always many, both labourers and soldiers in waiting, that they may succes~ 
sively attend upon and defend the common father and mother, on whose 
safety depend the happiness and even existence of the whole community, 
and whom these faithful subjects never abandon even in their last distress. 
The manner in which the Termites feed the young brood before they 
commence their active life and are admitted to share in the labours of the 
nest, has not, as far as I know, been recorded by any writer. I shall, 
therefore, leave them in their nurseries, and introduce you to the bustling 
scene which these creatures exhibit in their first state after they are become 
useful. To do this, in vain should I carry you to one of their nests — you 
would scarcely see a single one stirring — though, perhaps, under your feet 
there would be millions going and returning by a thousand different ways. 
Unless I possessed the power of Asmodeus in Le Diable Boitewx, of show- 
Ing you their houses and covered ways with their roofs removed, you 
would return home as wise as you came; for these little busy creatures 
are taught by Providence always to work under cover. If they have to 
travel over a rock or up a tree they vault with a coping of earth the route 
they mean to pursue, and they form subterranean paths and tunnels, some 
of a diameter wider than the bore of a large cannon, on all sides from 
their habitation to their various objects of attack ; or which sloping down 
(for they cannot well mount a surface quite perpendicular) penetrate to 
the depth of three or four feet under their nests into the earth, till they 
artive at a soil proper to be used in the erection of their buildings. Were 
they, indeed, to expose themselves, the race would soon be annihilated by 
‘ Gould’s Account of English Ants, 22. 
‘ John Hunter dissected two young queens. In the abdomen he found two 
varies, consisting of many hundred oviduets, each containing innumerable egys. 
jo 
