removal of the cloth.

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 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. Store-rooms
and magazines occupy the lower apartments, 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 bulk, and presenting the appearance of a mass of
shapeless pulp. From this great progenitrix proceed the myriads which
people the subterranean hive, consisting, like the communities of the
genuine ants, of labourers and soldiers, which are destined never to
acquire a fuller development than that of larvas, and the perfect
insects which in due time become invested with wings and take their
departing flight from the cave. But their new equipment seems only
destined to facilitate their dispersion from the parent nest, which
takes place at dusk; and almost as quickly as they leave it they divest
themselves of their ineffectual wings, waving them impatiently and
twisting them in every direction till they become detached and drop off,
and the swarm, within a few hours of their emancipation, become a prey
to the night-jars and bats, which are instantly attracted to them as
they issue in a cloud from the ground. I am not prepared to say that the
other insectivorous birds would not gladly make a meal of the termites,
but, seeing that in Ceylon their numbers are chiefly kept in check by
the crepuscular birds, it is observable, at least as a coincidence, that
the dispersion of the swarm generally takes place at _twilight_. Those
that escape the _caprimulgi_ lose their wings before morning, and are
then disposed of by the crows.

The strange peculiarity of the omnivorous ravages of the white ants is
that they shrink from the light, in all their expeditions for providing
food they construct a covered pathway of moistened clay, and their
galleries above ground extend to an incredible distance from the central
nest. No timber, except ebony and ironwood, which are too hard, and
those which are str