At the end of the dry season, as soon as the first rains have fallen, the male and female perfect termites, each about the size of two soldiers, or thirty labourers, and furnished with four long narrow wings folded on each other, emerge from their retreats in myriads. After a few hours their fragile wings fall off, and on the following morning they are discovered covering the surface of the earth and waters, where their enemies--birds, reptiles, ants--cause so sweeping a havoc that scarce one pair out of many thousands escapes destruction. If by chance the labourers, who are always busy prolonging their galleries, happen to meet with one of these fortunate couples, they immediately, impelled by their instinct, elect them sovereigns of a new community, and, conveying them to a place of safety, begin to build them a small chamber of clay, their palace and their prison--for beyond its walls they never again emerge. [Illustration: TERMITE.] Soon after the male dies, but, far from pining and wasting over the loss of her consort, the female increases so wonderfully in bulk that she ultimately weighs as much as 30,000 labourers, and attains a length of three inches, with a proportional width. This increase of size naturally requires a corresponding enlargement of the cell, which is constantly widened by the indefatigable workers. Having reached her full size, the queen now begins to lay her eggs, and as their extrusion goes on uninterruptedly, night and day, at the rate of fifty or sixty in a minute, for about two years, their total number may probably amount to more than fifty millions! A wonderful fecundity, which explains how a termite colony, originally few in number, increases in a few years to a population equalling or surpassing that of the British empire. This incessant extrusion of eggs necessarily calls for the attention of a large number of the workers in the royal chamber, to take them as they come forth, and carry them to the nurseries, in which, when hatched, they are provided with food, and carefully attended till they are able to shift for themselves, and become in their turn useful to the community. In widening their buildings according to the necessities of their growing population, from the size of small sugar-loaves to that of domes which might be mistaken for the hovels of Indians or negroes, as well as in repairing their damages, the termite workers display an unceasing and wonderful activity, while the soldiers, or neuters, which are in the proportion of about one to every hundred labourers, and are at once distinguished by the enormous size of their heads armed with long and sharp jaws, are no less remarkable for their courage and energy.