228 LIFE AND HER CHILDREN. 
with little white eggs, and with snow-white young 
workers and soldiers, which feed on a kind of mouldy 
fungus growing on the walls of their rooms. At last 
in the midst of these you come upon a large cell with 
a long soft whitish-brown lump in it as big as your 
finger, and looking something like an uncooked 
sausage (Figs. 78 and 79). At first you would 
think this was a mere bag, but looking at one end 
you would see three rings, each with a pair of legs, 
and a head (/if, Fig. 79) with eyes and feelers and 
Fig. 79. 
Part of a Queen Termite Cell broken open to show the Queen within. 
Smeathman. 
ht, Head and thorax, a, abdomen of the queen ; o, only real 
openings in the cell when it is perfect. The workers pass through 
these, w w, Workers. 
mouth. This white lump, then, is part of a living 
creature ; it is the abdomen of a termite queen 
swollen to nearly 2000 times its natural size and 
full of eggs. There she lies with her husband (k, 
Fig. 78), who is much bigger even than the soldiers, 
but nothing as compared to his queen, crouching by 
her side ; and while the working termites feed her and 
caress her, she goes on laying eggs incessantly, about 
60 a minute These the workers carry away as fast 
