434 



HABITATIONS OF INSECTS. 



lieving, 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 crea- 

 tures 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 tur- 

 rets, and sheltering under its ample arch myriads 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 stair-cases or bridges lately described — 

 and, finally, that the millions necessary to execute such Her- 

 culean labours, perpetually passing to and fro, should never 

 interrupt or interfere with each 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 a mile, and their tunnels would expand to a magni- 

 ficent 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 no- 

 things.^ So that when in the commencement of my last letter 



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 liorseback to travel in them. 



