40 
opposite bank, remarking our anxiety, came and offered us 
whole handfuls of them; and directing us to the spot where 
they had caught them, our astonishment is not to be ex- 
pressed, when we beheld millions of winged insects, issuing 
into daylight, through fissures in the earth, and through 
the pores, as it were, of the ground, where no opening was 
perceptible. Near these outlets, the children had posted 
themselves, and collecting the insects as they emerged, 
greedily devoured them. Such of them as escaped the Hot- 
tentots, were snapped up as they flew along by the small 
birds, and by the Libellule and other predatory flies. The 
body of these tiny insects is so small, and the wings are so 
large and unwieldy, that they could hardly support them- 
selves in the air, as they floated along at the humour of the 
breeze. ‘They were the males of the Termes capensis ; com- 
monly known by the name of the White Ant. 
** No country in the world is more infested with ants than 
the Cape. These insects vary in size, from the red Nigar, 
scarcely visible to the naked eye, to the Black Ant, measuring 
nearly an inch in length. "Their habitations are as various 
as their species. The smaller tribes excavate the ground, 
removing the soil, and depositing it as a rampart round the 
entrance, to keep off the water. The large black ants con- 
tent themselves with enlarging such cavities as they find 
ready formed, under flat stones, thus providing themselves 
with an impenetrable roof. A smaller species of the same à 
colour, constructs its nest on the top of a bush, enclosing 
such parts of the branches as come within the sphere of the 
external covering, which is as thin as paper, yet proof against 
the heaviest rain. But the most numerous and interesting 
insects are the Termites, of which the Cape furnishes several 
kinds. Of these, one species builds its nests on the sur- 
face of the ground. These are fabricated of loam, of an 
hemisphzerical shape, four or five feet high, and as much in 
diameter. In some districts, these nests cover the surface of 
the ground in immense numbers, standing within a few yards 
of each other, and resembling so many boulders of granite. — 
Struck with the prodigious disproportion between the size of 
