perpetually passing to and fro, should never interrupt and interfere with each other, is a miracle of nature, far exceeding the most boasted works and structures of man; for, did these creatures equal him in size, retaining their usual instincts and activity, their buildings would soar to the astonishing height of half a mile, and their tunnels would expand to a magnificent cylinder of more than three hundred feet in diameter; before which, the pyramids of Egypt, and the aqueducts of Rome, would lose their celebrity, and dwindle into nothing.

The most elevated of the pyramids of Egypt is not more than six hundred feet high, which, setting the average height of man at only five feet, is not more than a hundred and twenty times the height of the workmen employed. Whereas, the nests of the termites being at least twelve feet high, and the insects themselves not exceeding a quarter of an inch in stature, their edifices are upwards of five hundred times the height of the builders; which, supposing them of human dimensions, would be more than half a mile. The shaft of the Roman aqueducts was lofty enough to permit a man on horseback to travel in them.

The first establishment of a colony of termites takes place in the following manner. In the evening, soon after the first tornado, which at the latter end of the dry season proclaims the approach of the ensuing rains, these animals, having attained to their perfect state, in which they are furnished and adorned with two pair of wings, emerge from their claybuilt citadels by myriads and myriads, to seek their fortune. Borne on these ample wings, and carried by the wind, they fill the air, entering the houses, extinguishing the lights, and are sometimes driven on board the ships that are not far from the shore. The next morning, they are discovered covering the earth and waters, deprived of the wings which enabled them to avoid their numerous enemies, and which were only calculated to carry them a few hours. They now look like large maggots; and, from the most active, industrious, and rapacious creatures, they are become the most helpless and cowardly beings in nature, the prey of innumerable enemies, to the smallest of which they make not the least resistance. Insects, especially ants, which are always on the hunt for them, leave no place unexplored: birds, reptiles, beasts, and even man himself, look upon this event as their harvest, and, as the reader has been told before, make them their food, so that scarcely a pair in many millions get into a place of safety.

The workers, who are continually prowling about in then covered ways, occasionally meet with one of these pairs, and being impelled by their instinct, pay them homage, and they are elected as it were to be king and queen, or rather founders,

of a new colony: all that are not so fortunate, inevitably perish; and, considering the infinite host of their enemies, probably in the course of the following day. The workers, as soon as this election takes place, begin to inclose their new rulers in a small chamber of clay, before described, suited to their size, the entrances to which are only large enough to admit themselves and the neuters, but much too small for the royal pair to pass through;-so that their state of royalty is a state of confinement, and so continues during the remainder of their existence. The female, after this confinement, soon begins to furnish the infant colony with new inhabitants. The care of feeding her and her companion, devolves upon the industrious larvæ, which supply them both with every thing that they want. As she increases in dimensions, they continue to enlarge the cell in which she is detained. When the business of oviposition commences, they take the eggs from her, and deposit them in their nurseries. Her abdomen now begins gradually to extend, till in process of time it is enlarged to fifteen hundred or two thousand times the size of the rest of her body, and her bulk equals that of twenty or thirty thousand workers. This part, often more than three inches in length, is now a vast matrix of eggs, which make long cir cumvolutions through numberless slender serpentine vessels it is also remarkable for its peristaltic motion, (in this resembling the female ant; see Gould's Account of English Ants, p. 22.) which, like the undulations of water, produces a perpetual and successive rise and fall over the whole surface of the abdomen, and occasions a constant extrusion of the eggs, amounting sometimes in old females to sixty in a minute, or eighty thousand and upwards in twenty-four hours. As these females live two years in their perfect state, how astonishing must be the number produced in that time!

This incessant extrusion of eggs must call for the attention of a large number of the workers in the royal chamber, (and indeed it is always full of them,) to take them as they come forth, and carry them to the nurseries, in which, when hatched, they are provided with food, and receive every necessary attention, till they are able to shift for themselves. One remarkable circumstance attends these nurseries; they are always covered with a kind of mould, amongst which arise numerous globules, about the size of a pin's head. This is probably a species of mucor; and by Mr. Köenig, who found them also in nests of an East Indian species of termes, is conjectured to be the food of the larvæ.

The royal cell has also some soldiers in it, a kind of bodyguard to the royal pair that inhabit it; and the surrounding apartments contain always many, both labourers and soldiers, in wait ag, that they may successively attend upon and defend

the common father and mother, on whose safety depend the happiness and even existence of the whole community; and whom these faithful subjects never abandon even in the last distress

These little busy creatures are taught by Providence always to work under cover. If they have to travel over a rock, or up a tree, they vault, with a coping of earth, the route they mean to pursue, and they form subterranean paths and tunnels, some of a diameter wider than the bore of a large cannon, on all sides from their habitation, to their various objects of attack, or which sloping down, (for they cannot well mount a surface quite perpendicular,) penetrate to the depth of three or four feet under their nests into the earth, till they arrive at a soil proper to be used in the erection of their buildings. Were they, indeed, to expose themselves, the race would soon be annihilated by their innumerable enemies. If any accident happen to their various structures, or if they are dislodged from any of their covered ways, they are active and expeditious in repairing it; and in a single night they will restore a gallery of three or four yards in length. If, attacking the nest, you divide it into halves, leaving the royal chamber, and thus lay open thousands of apartments, all will be shut up with their sheets of clay by the next morning; nay, even if the whole be demolished, provided the king and the queen be left, every interstice between the ruins, at which either cold or wet can possibly enter, will be covered, and, in a year, the building will be raised nearly to its pristine size and grandeur.

Besides building and repairing, a great deal of their time is occupied in making necessary alterations in their mansion and its approaches. The royal presence chamber, as the female increases in size, must be gradually enlarged; the nurseries must be removed to a greater distance; the chambers and interior of the nest receive daily accessions, to provide for a daily increasing population; and the direction of their covered ways must often be varied, when the old stock of provision is exhausted, and new sources are discovered.

The collection of provisions for the use of the colony is another employment, which necessarily calls for incessant attention these, to the naked eye, appear like raspings of wood; but when examined by the microscope, they are found to consist chiefly of gums and the inspissated juices of plants, which, formed into little masses, are stored up in magazines made of clay.

When any one is bold enough to attack their nest, and make a breach in its walls, the labourers, who are incapable of fighting, retire within, and give way to another description of its inhabitants, whose office it is to defend the fortress when

assailed oy enemies; these, as observed before, are the reuters or soldiers. If the breach be made in a slight part of the building, one of these comes out to reconnoitre; he then retires and gives the alarm. Two or three others next appear, scrambling as fast as they can one after the other; to these succeed a large body, who rush forth with as much speed as the breach will permit, their numbers continually increasing during the attack. It is not easy to describe the rage and fury by which these diminutive heroes seem actuated. In their haste they frequently miss their hold, and tumble down the sides of their hill they soon, however, recover themselves, and, being blind, bite every thing they run against. If the attack proceeds, the bustle and agitation increase to a tenfold degree, and their fury is raised to its highest pitch. Wo to him whose hands or legs they can come at! for they will make their fanged jaws meet at the very first stroke, drawing as much blood as will counterpoise their whole body, and never quitting their hold, even though they are pulled limb from limb. The naked legs of the negroes expore them frequently to this injury; and the stockings of the Europeans are not thick enough to defend them.

On the other hand, if, after the first attack, you get a little out of the way, giving them no further interruption, supposing the assailant of their citadel is gone beyond their reach, in less than half an hour they will retire into the nest; and before they have all entered, you will see the labourers in motion, hastening in various directions towards the breach, every one carrying in his mouth a mass of mortar, half as big as his body, ready tempered; this mortar is made of the finest parts of the gravel, which they probably select in the subterranean pits or passages before described, which, worked up to a proper consistence, hardens to the solid substance resembling stone, of which their nests are constructed: they never appear to embarrass or interrupt one another. By the united labours of such an infinite host of creatures, the wall soon rises, and the breach is repaired.

While the labourers are thus employed, almost all the soldiers have retired quite out of sight, except here and there one, who saunters about amongst the labourers, but never assists in the work. One in particular places himself close to the wall which they are building; and turning himself leisurely on all sides, as if to survey the proceedings, appears to act the part of an overseer of the works. Every now and then, at the interval of a minute or two, by lifting up his head and striking is forceps upon the wall of the nest, he makes a particular noise, which is answered by a loud hiss from all the labourers, and appears to be a signa for dispatch; for, every time it is heard, they may be seen to redouble their pace, and

apply to their work with increased diligence. Renew the attack, and this amusing scene will be repeated: in rush the labourers, all disappearing in a few seconds, and out march the military, as numerous and vindictive as before. When all is once more quiet, the busy labourers re-appear, and resume their work, and the soldiers vanish. Repeat the experiment a hundred times, and the same will always be the result; you will never find, be the peril or emergency ever so great, that one order attempts to fight, or the other to work.

We have seen how solicitous the termites are to move and work under cover, and concealed from observation: this, however, is not always the case; there is a species larger than T. bellicosus, whose proceedings we have been principally describing, which Mr. Smeathman calls the marching Termes (Termes viarum). He was once passing through a thick forest, when on a sudden, a loud hiss, like that of serpents, struck him with alarm. The next step produced a repetition of the sound, which he then recognized to be that of white ants; yet he was surprised at seeing none of their hills or covering ways. Following the noise, to his great astonishment and delight, he saw an army of these creatures emerging from a hole in the ground; their number was prodigious, and they marched with the utmost celerity. When they had proceeded about a yard, they divided into two columns, chiefly composed of labourers, about fifteen abreast, and following each other in close order, and going straight forward. Here and there was seen a soldier, carrying his vast head with apparent difficulty, and looking like an ox in a flock of sheep, who marched on in the same manner. At the distance of a foot or two from the columns, many other soldiers were to be seen, standing still or pacing about as if upon the look-out, lest some enemy should suddenly surprise their unwarlike comrades; other soldiers, (which was the most extraordinary and amusing part of the scene,) having mounted some plants, and placed themselves on the points of their leaves, elevated from ten to fifteen inches from the ground, hung over the army marching below, and by striking their forceps upon the leaf, produced at intervals the noise above-mentioned. To this signal the whole army returned a hiss, and obeyed it by increasing their pace. The soldiers at these signal-stations sat quite still during the interval of silence, except now and then making a slight turn of the head, and seemed as solicitous to keep their posts as regu lar sentinels. The two columns of this army united, after continuing separate from twelve to fifteen paces, having in no part been above three yards asunder, and then descended into the earth by two or three holes. Mr. Smeathman continued watching them for above an hour, during which time their numbers appeared neither to increase nor diminish: the sol