Both the male and female are at first winged—as is the case with the real ants—but after the marriage flight they voluntarily break them off, as do these, and then set to work to found a colony. Whether the two entirely immure themselves in the cell, or chamber, referred to, or whether they only partially do so, and are assisted afterwards by the workers yet unborn, I cannot state, inasmuch as I have not watched the founding of a nest myself, and such authorities as I have been able to turn to, though writing as observers, say nothing on this head. Evidently they don’t know, but they don’t tell you that, either. However, be this as it may, the royal pair are, at some point in the earlier part of their career, enclosed in a compartment which may, at first, be roomy, but which, in this case, rapidly becomes, by the swelling of the queen’s body, now stored with thousands of eggs, only just able to contain them. The queen herself, in fact, whose abdomen has now become a long, white cylindrical object, like the blown-out finger-stall of a white kid glove, almost fills the space with this alone, her head and thorax being, in comparison with it, of as contemptible dimensions as are those of a bean-stalk, compared with its bean. Yet, besides herself, there is room not only for the male, but for some of the workers, which are very small, and enter the cell through a line of small holes, running round it, longitudinally, in the centre. Through these holes the king and queen are fed by the workers, which have probably bored them, since they but just admit their own bodies. This, however, is the least part of their duties. Very soon the queen begins to lay her eggs, and continues to do so day and night, without intermission, at the astonishing rate of from sixty to eighty thousand in the twenty-four hours. All are carried out by the workers, and deposited, eventually, in the nursery which they themselves have prepared for them. Since, however, the very workers which do this have first to be born, it seems evident that the earlier eggs must for some time lie where they fall, and perhaps be afterwards stored somewhere else, whilst the nursery is a-making. The great size that the nest becomes seems to suggest that it is the gradual work of many generations of termites, brought forth by successive queens. It must, however, have had a beginning, and it is this beginning, as made by a single royal pair, that I have here been considering. It is quite possible that nobody may yet have watched it, or both watched and written about it. Probably it is most difficult—perhaps impossible—to do so; but it is irritating to read that the nest is founded in this way, and find not so much as an allusion to these obvious difficulties. It is quite as incumbent, I think, on those who watch creatures, to say what they have not been able to find out, as what they have.