and fimilar contrivances, they travel with great facility to every
interior part.
Having given fome idea o f the nefts, we now proceed to give
a more particular account o f the infefts themfelves, which will
be exceedingly neceffary to a tolerable acquaintance with their
ceconomy and management, their manner of building, fighting,
and marching, and to a more particular account o f their ufes in
the creation, and o f the vaft mifchief they caufe to mankind.
There are o f every fpecies o f termites three orders; o f tliefe
orders the working infects, or labourers, are always the moll
numerous; in the termes bellicosus there feem to be at the
leaft one hundred labourers to one o f the fighting infefis, or fol-
diers.. They are in this flate about one-fourth o f an inch long,
and twenty-five o f them weigh about a grain, lo that they are not
fo large as fome o f our ants; from their external habit and fond-
nefs for wood, they have been very expreflively called wood-lice
by fome people, and the whole genus has been known by that
name, particularly among the French. They refemble them, it
is true, very much at a diftance; they run as fall, or falter, than
any other inleft o f their fize, and are inceflantly buftling about
■ their affairs.
The fecond order, or foldiers, have a-very different appearance
from the labourers, and have been by fome authors fuppofed to
be the males, and the former neuters ; but they are, in fa£t, the
fame infefts as the foregoing, only they have undergone a change
o f form, and approached one degree nearer to the perfeft flate.
They are now much larger, being half an inch long, and equal
in bulk to fifteen o f the labourers. There is now, likewife, a
6 molt
molt remarkable circumftance in the form o f the head and mouth;
for in the former flate the mouth is evidently calculated for gnawing
and holding bodies ; but in this flate, the jaws being lhaped
juft like two very fharp awls a little jagged, they are incapable o f
any thing but piercing or wounding, for which purpofes they are
very effeftual, being as hard as a crab’s claw, and placed in a
ftrong horney head, which is o f a nut-brown colour, and larger
than all the reft o f the body together, which feems to labour under
great difficulty in carrying i t : on which account, perhaps,
the animal is incapable of climbing up perpendicular furfaces.
The third order, or the infeft in it’s perfeft flate, varies it’s form
ftill more than ever; the head,, thorax, and abdomen, differ
almoft entirely from th,e fame parts in the labourers and foldiers j
and befides this, the animal is now furnilhed with four fine large
brownifh tranfparent wings, with which it is, at the time o f emigration,
to wing it’s way in fearch o f a new fettlement: in Ihort,
it differs fo much from it’s form and appearance in the two other
ftates, that it has never been fuppofed to be the fame animal, but
by thofe who have feen it in the fame neft; and fome o f thefe have
diftrufted the evidence o f their fenfes. It was fo long before Mr.
Smeathman met with them in the nefts, that he doubted the information
which was given him by the natives, that they
belonged to the fame family-: indeed, you may open twenty nefts
without finding one winged one ; for thofe are to. be found only
juft before the commencement of the rainy feafon, when they undergo
the I aft change, which is preparative, to their colonization.
Add to this, they fometimes abandon an outward part o f their
building, the community being diminilhed by fome accident that
is unknown ; fometimes different fpecies o f the real ant (formica)
P p .polfefs