the Termites of Africa and other hot Climates . 149 
Thefe hills continue quite bare until they are fix or eight feet 
high ; but in time the dead barren clay, of which they are 
compofed, becomes fertilized by the genial power of the ele- 
ments in thefe prolific climates, and the addition of vegetable 
falts and other matters brought by the wind ; and in the fecond 
or third year, the hillock, if not oVer-fhaded by trees, becomes, 
like the reft of the earth, almoft covered with grafs and other 
plants ; and in the diy feafon, when the herbage is burnt up 
by the rays of the fun, it is not much unlike a very large 
hay-cock ( IO ) • 
Every one of thefe buildings confifts of two diftindt parts, 
the exterior and the interior. 
The exterior is one large fhell in the manner of a dome, 
large and ftrong enough to inclofe and (helter the interior from 
the viciffitudes of the weather, and the inhabitants from the 
attacks of natural or accidental enemies. It is always, there- 
fore, much ftronger than the interior building, which is the 
habitable part divided with a wonderful kind of regularity and 
contrivance into an amazing number of apartments for the 
refidence of the king and, queen 7 and the nurfing of their nu- 
is proportionably wide at the bafe, a great many times its folid contents. If to this 
comparifon we join that of the time in which the different buildings are erected, 
and confider the Termites as railing theirs in the courfe of three or four years, the 
immenfity of their works fets the boalfed magnitude of the antient wonders of 
the world in a mofi: diminutive point of view, and gives a fpecimen of induflry 
and enterprize as much beyond the pride and ambition of men as St. Paul's 
Cathedral exceeds an Indian hut. 
(10) See a figure of one of thofe nelts in salmon's Univerfal Traveller, in the 
map of Gambia, where it is called a Pifmire Hill : there is alfo a figure of one 
of the labouring infects j but as the hill is reprefented below all proportion-, and! 
the infeft rather larger than life, it gives no idea of the building.. I have not been 
able to find out from what author sal.mo.n took this figure ; and it is the only one 
1 have met with* 
merous 
