Microscopical Essays, 



and fimilar contrivances, they travel with great facility to every 

 interior part. 



Having given fome idea of trie nefts, we now proceed to give 

 a more particular account of the infecls themfeives, which will 

 be exceedingly neceflary to a tolerable acquaintance with their 

 ceconomy and management, their manner of building, fighting, 

 and marching, and to a more particular account of their ufes in 

 the creation, and of the vaft mifchief they caufe to mankind. 

 There are of every fpecies of termites three orders; of thefe 

 orders the working infects, or labourers, are always the moll 

 numerous; in the term.es bellicosus there feem to be at the 

 leaft one hundred labourers to one of the fighting infecls, or fol- 

 diers. They are in this ft ate about one-fourth of an inch long, 

 and twenty-five of them weigh about a grain, fo that they are not 

 fo large as fome of our ants ; from their external habit and fond- 

 nefs for wood, they have been very expreffively called wood-lice 

 by fome people, and the whole genus has been known by that 

 name, particularly among the French. They referable them, it 

 is true, very much at a diftance ; they run as faft, or fafter, than 

 any other infect, of their fize, and are inceftantly buflling about 

 their affairs. 



The fecond order, or foldiers, have a very different appearance 

 from the labourers, and have been by fome authors fuppofed to 

 be the males, and the former neuters ; but they are, in fact, the 

 ■fame infecls as the foregoing, only they have undergone a change 

 of form, and approached one degree nearer to the perfect, flate. 

 They are now much larger, being half an inch long, and equal 

 in bulk to fifteen of the labourers. There is now, likewife, a 

 6 moil 



