Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 27.djvu/769

Rh equaled that manipulated annually in temperate regions by the earth-worm.

These mounds, however, are more than mere waste-heaps. Like the corresponding region underground they are built into a mesh-work of tunnels, galleries, and chambers, where the social interests of the community are attended to. The most spacious of these chambers, usually far underground, is very properly allocated to the head of the society, the queen. The queen-termite (Fig. 5) is a very rare insect,



and as there are seldom more than one, or at most two, to a colony, and as the royal apartments are hidden far in the earth, few persons have ever seen a queen, and indeed most, if they did happen to come across it, from its very singular appearance would refuse to believe that it had any connection with white ants. It possesses, indeed, the true termite head (Figs. 6, 7), but there the resemblance to the other members of the family stops, for the size of the head bears about the same proportion to the rest of the body as does the tuft on his Glengarry bonnet to a six-foot Highlander. The phenomenal corpulence of the royal body in the case of the queen-termite is possibly due in part to want of exercise, for once seated upon her throne she never stirs to the end of her days. She lies there, a large, loathsome cylindrical package, two or three inches long, in shape like a sausage, and as



white as a bolster. Her one duty in life is to lay eggs (Fig. 8), and it must be confessed she discharges her function with complete success, for in a single day her progeny often amounts to many thousands, and for months this enormous fecundity never slackens. The body increases slowly in size, and through the transparent skin the long-folded ovary may be seen, with the eggs, impelled by a peristaltic