Consider what incredible labour and diligence, accompanied by the most unremitting activity and the most unwearied celerity of movement, must be necessary to enable these creatures to accomplish, their size considered, these truly gigantic works. That such diminutive insects, for they are scarcely the fourth of an inch in length, however numerous, should, in the space of three or four years, be able to erect a building twelve feet high and of a proportionable bulk, covered by a vast dome, adorned without by numerous pinnacles and turrets, and sheltering under its ample arch myriads of vaulted apartments of various dimensions, and constructed of different materials—that they should moreover excavate, in different directions and at different depths, innumerable subterranean roads or tunnels, some twelve or thirteen inches in diameter, or throw an arch of stone over other roads leading from the metropolis into the adjoining country to the distance of several hundred feet—that they should project and finish the, for them, vast interior stair-cases or bridges lately described—and, finally, that the millions necessary to execute such Herculean labours, perpetually passing to and fro, should never interrupt or interfere with each other, is a miracle of nature, or rather of the Author of nature, far exceeding the most boasted works and structures of man: for, did these creatures equal him in size, retaining their usual instincts and activity, their buildings would soar to the astonishing height of more than half a mile, and their tunnels would expand to a magnificent cylinder of more than three hundred feet in diameter; before which the pyramids of Egypt and the aqueducts of Rome would lose all their celebrity, and dwindle into nothings[847]. So that when in the commencement of my last letter I promised to introduce you to insects whose labours produced edifices more astonishing than those of the mightiest Egyptian monarchs, the pyramids, my promise, whatever you then thought of it, was the reverse of hyperbolical.
I am, &c.
END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.
LONDON:
PRINTED BY RICHARD TAYLOR,
RED LION COURT, FLEET STREET.
