{368}_T. bellicosus_ forms buildings comparable to human dwellings; some of them being twenty feet in height and of great solidity. In some parts of West Africa these nests were, in Smeathman's time, so numerous that they had the appearance of villages. Each nest was the centre of a community of countless numbers of individuals; subterranean passages extended from them in various directions. The variety of forms in one of these communities has not been well ascertained, but it would seem that the division of labour is carried to a great extent. The soldiers are fifteen times the size of the workers. The community is dependent on one royal couple. It is the opinion of the natives that if that couple perish so also does the community; and if this be correct we may conclude that this species has not a perfect system of replacing royal couples. The queen attains an almost incredible size and fertility. Smeathman noticed the great and gradual growth of the abdomen, and says it enlarges "to such an enormous size that an old queen will have it increased so as to be fifteen hundred or two thousand times the bulk of the rest of her body, and twenty or thirty thousand times the bulk of a labourer, as I have found by carefully weighing and computing the different states." He also describes the rate at which the eggs are produced, saying that there is a constant peristaltic movement[294] of the abdomen, "so that one part or other alternately is rising and sinking in perpetual succession, and the matrix seems never at rest, but is always protruding eggs to the amount (as I have frequently counted in old queens) of sixty in a minute, or eighty thousand and upward in one day of twenty-four hours." This observer, after giving an account of the great swarms of perfect winged Insects that are produced by this species, and after describing the avidity with which they are devoured by the Hymenopterous ants and other creatures, adds: "I have discoursed with several gentlemen upon the taste of the white ants; and on comparing notes we have always agreed that they are most {369}delicious and delicate eating. One gentleman compared them to sugared marrow, another to sugared cream and a paste of sweet almonds."