WHITE ANTS. 
496 
of security. Some, however, are so fortunate ; and 
being found by some of the labouring insects that 
are continually running about the surface of the 
ground under their covered galleries, which I shall 
shortly describe, are elected kings and queens of 
new states ; all those who are not so elected and 
preserved certainly perish, and most probably in 
the course of the following day. The manner in 
which these labourers protect the happy pair from 
their innumerable enemies, not only on the day of 
the massacre of almost all their race, but for a long 
time after, will I hope justify me in the use of the 
term election. The little industrious creatures im- 
mediately enclose them in a small chamber of clay 
suitable to their size, into which at first they leave 
but one small entrance, large enough for themselves 
and the soldiers to go in and out, but much too 
little for either of the royal pair to make use of; 
and when necessity obliges them to make more en- 
trances, they are never larger, so that, of course, the 
voluntary subjects charge themselves with the task 
of providing for the offspring of their sovereigns, as 
well as to work, and to fight for them, until they 
shall have raised a progeny capable at least of divid- 
ing the task with them. 
ct About this time a most extraordinary change 
begins to take place in the queen, to which I know 
nothing similar, except in the Pulex penetrans of 
Linnaeus, the Jigger of the West Indies, and in the 
different species of Coccus, cochineal. The abdo- 
men of this female begins gradually to extend and 
