Chap. XII.] 
THE WHITE ANT. 
413 
the ground, with a corresponding diameter. They are 
so firm in their texture that the weight of a horse 
makes no apparent indentation on their solidity ; and 
even the intense rains of the monsoon, which no cement 
or mortar can long resist, fail to penetrate the surface 
or substance of an ant hill. 1 In their earlier stages the 
termites proceed with such energetic rapidity, that I 
have seen a pinnacle of moist clay, six inches in height 
and twice as large in diameter, constructed underneath 
a table between sitting down to dinner and the removal 
of the cloth. 
As these lofty mounds of earth have all been carried 
up from beneath the surface, a cave of corresponding 
dimensions is necessarily scooped out below, and here, 
under the multitude of miniature cupolas and pinnacles 
which canopy it above, the termites hollow out the royal 
chamber for their queen, with spacious nurseries sur- 
rounding it on all sides ; and all are connected by arched 
galleries, long passages, and doorways of the most in- 
tricate and elaborate construction. In the centre and 
underneath the spacious dome is the recess for the 
queen — a hideous creature, with the head and thorax of 
an ordinary termite, but a body swollen to a hundred 
1 Dr. Hooker, in his Himalayan on the closely cemented clay of the 
Journal (vol. i. p. 20) is of opinion white ants' nest, they may be daily 
that the nests of the termites are seen constructing their edifices in 
not independent structures, but the very form of a cone, which 
that their nucleus is " the debris they ever after retain. Besides 
of clumps of bamboos or the trunks which, they appear in the midst of 
of large trees which these insects terraces and fields where no trees 
have destroyed." He supposes are to be seen; and Dr. Hooker 
that the dead tree falls leaving the seems to overlook the fact that the 
stump coated with sand, which the termites rarely attack a living tree; 
action of the weather soon fashions and although their nests may be 
into a cone. But independently of built against one, it continues to 
the fact that the " action of the flourish not the less for their pre- 
weather" produces little or no effect sence. 
