continued their service even in captivity, turning
unceasingly round the queen, feeding her and
transporting the eggs, and for want of
nurseries, piling them behind some bit of
clay or in an angle of the bottle, which
served them as a prison.

The third order, or perfect insects, differ
almost entirely in form from the soldiers
and labourers, especially in the shape of
their abdomen, thorax, and head, besides
being furnished with four large, fine, brownish,
transparent wings on which at the time of
emigration, they fly in search of a new
settlement. In size they are about seven-
tenths of an inch; their wings measure more
than two inches and a half from tip to tip,
and they are equal in bulk to thirty labourers
or two soldiers. They have also two large
eyes, one on each side of the head; and in
this state the insects issue from their
subterranean home during, or soon after, the
first tornado, which, at the latter end of the
dry season, proclaims the approach of the
heavy rains. The numbers which are to be
found next morning all over the surface of
the earth, but especially upon the water, is
truly astonishing. For their wings are only
calculated to carry them a few hours, and
after the rising of the sun not one in a
thousand is to be found with four wings,
unless the morning continue rainy, when here
and there a solitary individual may be seen
winging its way from one place to another,
anxious to avoid its numerous enemies. The
special enemies of the termites are various
species of ants, which are waiting and watching
for them on every spray and every leaf.
Not only do ants, birds, and reptiles destroy
them, but even the inhabitants of the country
eagerly seek after and eat them. All
travellers speak of the ant-eating peoples;
but in reality it is the termites which are
eaten. The Indians smoke the termite hills,
and catch the winged insects as they are
coming out. The less industrious Africans,
merely pick up those which fall on the
surrounding water. The Indians knead these
insects with flour into a cake, while the
Africans think them delicious when roasted
and eaten in handfuls. However strange
this may appear, European travellers agree
in speaking of the termites as agreeable
food, and compare their taste to a sweet
marrow or cream. Smeathman says they
form a delicate, nourishing, and healthy
aliment: nevertheless, the abuse of this sort
of food often brings on serious diseases;
among others a sort of epidemic dysentery
which carries off its victims in three or four
hours.

With so many enemies, it is indeed
marvellous that a single pair should be able to
escape to a place of security, and lay the
foundation of a new community. Some
males and females, however, are fortunate
enough to be found by the labourers which
are continually running about in the grass,
and are elected, as it is called, king and
queen. The manner in which the labourers
elect their sovereigns is by inclosing them in
a chamber of clay suitable to their size,
leaving but one small entrance, large enough
for themselves and the soldiers to go in and
out, but much too small for either of the
royal pair, who are thus made prisoners;
whilst their voluntary subjects undertake
the task of working for them, fighting for
them, and providing for their offspring.

About this time a most extraordinary
change begins to take place in the queen.
Her abdomen gradually becomes extended
and enlarged to such an enormous size, that
in an old female it is sometimes fifteen
hundred or two thousand times the bulk of the
rest of her body, and twenty or thirty
thousand times the bulk of a labourer. The skin
between the segments of the abdomen extend
in every direction; and at last the segments
are removed to half an inch distance from
each other, although at first the whole length
of the abdomen is not half an inch. The
segments preserve their dark brown colour,
and the upper part of the abdomen is marked
with a regular series of brown bars throughout
its entire length, while the intervals
between them are covered with a thin,
delicate, transparent skin. The insect is
supposed to be upwards of two years old
when the abdomen is increased to three
inches in length; and they are sometimes
found nearly twice that size. The abdomen
is now become a vast matrix full of eggs, not
more remarkable for its amazing size than
for its peristaltic motion, which resembles
the undulations of the waves, and continues
incessantly, without any apparent effort of
the animal. One part or the other is
alternately rising and falling, and the matrix is
never at rest, but is always protruding eggs,
to the number of sixty in a minute in old
queens, or eighty thousand and upwards in
one day of twenty-four hours. These eggs
are instantly taken from the body of the
queen by her attendants, and carried to the
nurseries, some of which in a large nest may
be four or five feet distant in a straight line,
and consequently much further by their
winding galleries. There, after they are
hatched, the young ones are attended and
provided with everything necessary until
able to shift for themselves, and do their
share of the labours of the community.

There are supposed to be about twenty-
four or twenty-five distinct species of termites,
of which nine belong to Africa, nine to
America, two to Asia, and the rest to
Europe. The European species are found
only in France. The termites are supposed
to have been imported into France about the
year seventeen hundred and eighty by a firm
of rich shipowners named Poupet, who were
in the habit of receiving cargoes from Saint
Domingo, because it so happened that the
termites made their appearance in the towns