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 bulk, and presenting the appearance of a mass of shapeless pulp.  From this great progenitrix proceed the myriads that 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 larvae, 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 fall a prey to the crows, on the morning succeeding their flight.

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 strongly impregnated with camphor or aromatic oils, which they dislike, presents any obstacle to their ingress.  I have had a case of wine filled, in the course of two days, with almost solid clay, and only discovered the presence of the white ants by the escape from the corks.  I have had a portmanteau in my tent so peopled with them in the course of a single night that the contents were found worthless in the morning.  In an incredibly short time a detachment of these pests will destroy a press full of records, reducing the paper to fragments; and a shelf of books will be tunnelled into a gallery if