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 (fit, Fig. 79) with eyes and feelers and 
Fig. 79. 
Part of a Queen Termite Cell broken open to show the Queen within. 
S??ieathman. 
kt, 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 (£, 
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 
