Essays on the Microscope: Containing a Practical Description of the Most Improved Microscopes, a General History of Insects, etc., etc.Adams, George
Science
Essays on the Microscope: Containing a Practical Description of the Most Improved Microscopes, a General History of Insects, etc., etc.
Adams, George
Insects -- Early works to 1800; Microscopy -- Early works to 1800
From every part of these large galleries are various small pipes or
galleries, leading to different parts of the building; under ground
there are a great many which lead downward, by sloping descents three
and four feet perpendicular among the gravel, from whence the labouring
termites cull the finer parts, which being worked up in their mouths to
the consistence of mortar, becomes that solid clay or stone, of which
their hills and all their buildings, except the nurseries, are composed.
Other galleries again ascend and lead out horizontally on every side,
and are carried under ground near to the surface, a vast distance.
There is a kind of necessity for the galleries under the hills being
thus large, as they are the great thoroughfares for all the labourers
and soldiers going forth or returning upon any business whatever,
whether fetching clay, wood, water, or provisions; and they are
certainly well calculated for the purposes to which they are applied, by
the spiral slope which is given them.
Those species which build either the roofed turrets, or the nests in the
trees, seem in most instances to have a strong resemblance to the
preceding, both in their form and œconomy, going through the same
changes from the egg to the winged state. The queens also increase to a
great size when compared with the labourers, but very short of those
queens before described. The largest are from about an inch to an inch
and an half long, and not much thicker than a common quill. There is the
same kind of peristaltic motion in the abdomen, but in a much smaller
degree; and as the animal is incapable of moving from her place, the
eggs, no doubt are carried to the different cells by the labourers, and
reared with a care similar to that which is practised in the larger
nests.
It is remarkable of all these different species, that the working and
the fighting insects never expose themselves to the open air, but either
travel under ground, or within such trees and substances as they
destroy; except, indeed, when they cannot proceed by their latent
passages, and find it convenient or necessary to search for plunder
above ground: in that case they make pipes of that material with which
they build their nests. The larger sort use the red clay; the turret
builders use the black clay; and those which build in the trees employ
the same ligneous substance of which their nests are composed.
The termites, except their heads, are exceedingly soft, and covered with
a very thin and delicate skin; being blind, they are no match on open
ground for the ants, who can see, and are all of them covered with a
strong horny shell not easily pierced, and are of dispositions bold,
active, and rapacious.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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