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numbers during the summer months; but, when disturbed, they run so nimbly into a hiding-place as not often to be remarked. When they are disturbed, they are very shy in making their noise; but if they can be viewed without being alarmed by noise, or moving the place where they are, they will not only beat freely, but even answer any per son's beating with his nail. At every stroke their body shakes, or seems affected as by a sudden jerk; and these jerks succeed each other so quickly that it requires great steadiness to perceive with the naked eye that the body has any motion. scarcely ever heard to beat before July, and never later than the sixteenth of August. It appears strange that so small an animal should be able to make a noise so loud as is frequently to be heard from this; sometimes equal to that of the strongest beating watch. Dr. Derham seems to have been the first naturalist who examined and described this species. He had often heard the noise, and in pursuing it had found nothing but these insects, which he supposed incapable of producing it; but one day, by finding that the noise proceeded from a piece of paper loosely folded, and lying in a good light in his study window, he viewed it through, and with a microscope observed, to his great astonishment, one of them in the very act of beating. In some years they are more numerous than in others, and their ticking is of course more frequently beard. Dr. Derham says, that during the month of July, in one particular summer, they scarcely ever ceased, either in the day or night.

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The female lays her eggs in dry and dusty places, where they are likely to meet with the least disturbance these are exceedingly small, and are not unlike the nits or eggs of lice. They are generally hatched about the beginning of March, or a little sooner or later, according to the weather. After leaving the egg, the animals are so small as scarcely to be discerned without the assistance of a glass. They continue in this larva state, somewhat resembling in appearance the mites in cheese, about two months; after which they undergo their change.

They feed on dead flies and other insects; and, from their numbers and voracity, often very much deface cabinets of natural history. They also live on various other substances, and may frequently be observed hunting for nutritious particles with great care and attention, among the dust in which they are found; turning it over with their heads, and searching among it somewhat in the manner of swine. Many of them live through the winter; but, during that time, in order to avoid the inconveniences of frost, they bury themselves deep in dust*.

The Death-watch Termes seems to bear very little relation to the following species.

THE WHITE ANTS†.

The animals of this extraordinary community are. found in the East Indies, and in many parts of Africa

+ SYNONYMS.

* Phil. Tran. vol. xxvi. p. 231.

Termes fatale. Linn. Le Thermès fatale.

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and South America, where their depredations are greatly dreaded by the inhabitants. Mr. Smeathman, whose account of them occupies above fifty pages in the seventy-first volume of the Philosophical Transactions, says that they are naturally divided into three orders: 1. The working insects, which he distinguishes by the name of labourers; 2. The fighters, or soldiers, which perform no other labour than such as is necessary in defence of the nests; and, 3. The winged or perfect insects, which are male and female, and capable of multiplying the species. These last he calls the nobility or gentry; because they neither labour nor fight.

In their nest or hill, for they build on the surface of the ground, the labourers are always the most nuThere are at least a hundred labourers to

one of the fighting insects or soldiers. When in this state, they are about a fourth of an inch in length; which is rather smaller than some of our

ants.

The second order, or soldiers, differ in figure from the labourers. These appear to be such insects as have undergone one change toward their perfect state. They are now near half an inch in length, and equal in size to about fifteen of the labourers. The form of the head is likewise greatly changed. In the labourer state, the mouth is evidently formed for gnawing, or for holding bodies; but, in the soldier state, the jaws, being shaped like two sharp awls a little jagged, are destined solely for piercing or wounding. For these purposes they are well calculated; being as hard as a crab's claw, and placed

in a strong horny head, which is larger than all the rest of the body.

The insect of the third order, or in its perfect state, is still more remarkable. The head, the tho rax, and the abdomen, differ almost entirely from the same parts in the labourers and soldiers. The animals are, besides, now furnished with four large brownish transparent wings, by which they are enabled, at the proper season, to emigrate, and to establish new settlements. They are now also greatly altered in their size as well as figure, and have acquired the powers of propagating the species. Their bodies now measure near three quarters of an inch in length, their wings, from tip to tip, above two inches and a half, and their bulk is equal to that of thirty labourers, or two soldiers. Instead of active, industrious, and rapacious little animals, when they arrive at their perfect state they become innocent, helpless, and dastardly. Their numbers are great, but their enemies are still more numerous : they are devoured by birds, by every species of ants, by carnivorous reptiles, and even by the inhabitants of many parts of Africa. After such devastation it seems surprising that even a single pair should escape. "Some, however," says Mr. Smeathman, ❝are so fortunate; and being found by some of the labouring insects, that are continually running about the surface of the ground under their covered gal leries, are elected Kings and Queens of new states; all those which are not so elected and preserved certainly perish. The manner in which these labourers protect the happy pair from their innume

rable enemies, not only on the day of the massacre of almost all their race, but for a long time after, will, I hope, justify me in the use of the term election. The little industrious creatures immediately inclose them in a small chamber of clay suitable to their size, into which at first they leave but one entrance, large enough for themselves and the soldiers

to

go in and out at, but much too little for either of the royal pair to use; and, when necessity obliges them to make more entrances, they are never larger; so that, of course, the voluntary subjects charge themselves with the task of providing for the offspring of their sovereigns, as well as of working and fighting for them, until they have raised a progeny capable at least of dividing the task with them."

About this time a most extraordinary change takes place in the queen. The abdomen begins to extend and enlarge to such an enormous size, that an old queen will sometimes have it so much increased as to be near two thousand times the bulk of the rest of her body. The skin between the segments of the abdomen extends in every direction; and at last the segments are removed to the distance of half an inch from each other, though at first the whole length of the abdomen was not half an inch. When the insect is upward of two years old, the abdomen is increased to three inches in length, and it is sometimes seen near twice that size. It is now of an irregular oblong shape, and is become one vast matrix full of eggs, which make long circumvolutions through an innumerable quantity of very minute vessels, that circulate round the inside in a

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