ect[A] resembling the _Aphrophora
spumaria_; seven or eight individuals of which distil several pints of
water every night.--P. 414. It is highly probable that the termites are
endowed with some such faculty: nor is it more remarkable that an insect
should combine the gases of its food to produce water, than that a fish
should decompose water in order to provide itself with gas. FOURCROIX
found the contents of the air-bladder in a carp to be pure
nitrogen.--_Yarrell_, vol. i. p. 42. And the aquatic larva of the
dragon-fly extracts air for its respiration from the water in which it
is submerged. A similar mystery pervades the inquiry whence plants under
peculiar circumstances derive the water essential to vegetation.]

[Footnote A: _A. goudotti?_ Bennett.]

[Footnote 2: KNOX'S _Ceylon_, Part i, ch. vi, p.24.]

[Footnote 3: Dr. HOOKER, in his _Himalayan Journal_ (vol. i. p. 20) is
of opinion that the nests of the termites are not independent
structures, but that their nucleus is "the debris of clumps of bamboos
or the trunks of large trees which these insects have destroyed." He
supposes that the dead tree falls leaving the stump coated with sand,
_which the action of the weather soon fashions into a cone_. But
independently of the fact that the "action of the weather" produces
little or no effect on the closely cemented clay of the white ants'
nest, they may be daily seen constructing their edifices in the very
form of a cone, which they ever after retain. Besides which, they appear
in the midst of terraces and fields where no trees are to be seen: and
Dr. Hooker seems to overlook the fact that the termites rarely attack a
living tree; and although their nests may be built against one, it
continues to flourish not the less for their presence.]

As these lofty mounds of earth have all been carried up from beneath the
surface, a cave of corresponding dimensions is necessarily scooped out
below, and here, under the multitude of miniature cupolas and pinnacles
which canopy it above, the termites hollow out the royal chamber for
their queen, with spacious nurseries surrounding it on all sides; and
all are connected by arched galleries, long passages, and doorways of
the most intricate and elaborate construction. In the centre and
underneath the spacious dome is the recess for the queen--a hideous
creature, with the head and thorax of an ordinary termite, but a body
swollen to a hundred times its usual and proportionate bul