HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



colonies, the more one is at fault to find the direct- 

 ing guiding spirit, and one has to fall back to the 

 instinct so wonderfully implanted in them by their 

 Great Creator. 



One reads of white - ant hills in Africa and 

 America, upon which a bison takes his stand to 

 look out. I have never met with such in India ; 

 alt bough occasionally there may be tbree or four 

 together, which get broken dowD, and new mounds 

 rise from the top, whereby a height of four or five 

 feet is attained, and these mounds will bear any 

 weight without fear of being crushed. 



The earth of which they are composed is prized 

 by masons for mixing in mortar, and truly it has a 

 wonderful tenacity and fineness of texture. 



In places where these insects are at all common, 

 one cannot place a piece of stick on the ground 

 at night without finding it in the morning covered 

 with a layer of earth. They are very troublesome 

 to beds of cuttings, sometimes eating off all the 

 roots. 



I used to put a small circular piece of copper 

 plate upon a larger piece of zinc plate, and then 

 stand the leg of the wardrobe in the centre of the 

 copper. I never found the insects to make a gal- 

 lery across this, which I imagine acted as a kind of 

 galvanic battery, when damped by the moisture of 

 their earth. The rooms of many houses in India are 

 laid with pitch, aspbalte, and other preparations. 

 This will keep them out if there be not the least 

 crack in them through which the insect can come. 

 They will also come over the edge, so that it is ex- 

 tremely difficult to exclude them. 



The large hornets are very fond of them, and I 

 have seen them catching them one by one, and 

 making up a ball wherewith to feed their young. 

 Other insects also eat them. 



They cannot work without moisture, and although 

 they never cease their labour day or night, they 

 prefer darkness for their mischievous deeds. They 

 are found in the driest desert places, and where 

 they then obtain the necessary liquid is very strange. 

 Their cells, being so thickly coated with earth, are 

 comparatively cool, and the royal cell, being at a 

 depth of at least three feet, keeps a very even tem- 

 perature. 



Everything they touch is stained with their acid. 

 I once had a large box of miscellaneous goods left 

 in Calcutta for two years in a warehouse. On my 

 return to Calcutta, 1 found the contents to be a 

 mass of white-ant earth, in which were firmly im- 

 bedded and well stained, six bronze wall bracket- 

 shades. These alone they could not eat. I sent 

 them to be rebronzed, and the native returned them 

 paiuted black ! In their case, however, the instinct 

 is truly blind, and the insect cannot see its nu- 

 merous foes, and will rebuild a gallery tenor twelve 

 times, or as often as it is destroyed. 



When lying ill, I have watched the gallery getting 



longer and longer with the tiny secretion of each 

 ant, and when I have had to sweep it all away, I 

 have next day seen the same task repeated, till at 

 last the death perhaps of so many workers has 

 deterred the main body from continuing the work 

 after seven or eight calamities. The Palm or 

 Striped Squirrel (Sciurus palmarwm) is very fond of 

 them, as are mice and many kinds of birds ; yet 

 their numbers steadily increase, and they were the 

 constant plague for many years of your Indian 

 observer. 



THE STORY OP A BOULDER. 

 By J. E. Taylor, P.G.S., &c. 



EEW of my fellow story-tellers can boast of 

 adventures equal to mine. My life has been a 

 restless one, and to see me quietly reposing in some 

 bed of clay, the non-geologist would little' suspect 

 what strange romances I could tell him. I will do 

 my best to recount them. Not many years ago this 

 would have been totally impossible. At that time 

 geology was chiefly made up of guesses, many of 

 which, however, proved to be shrewdly true. The 

 great sheets of sand, gravel, and clay which extend, 

 more or less, over the northern, midland, and east- 

 ern counties of England — as well as over the Con. 

 tinent and in the United States of America, were 

 supposed to have been the debris left by Noah's 

 Plood, and were therefore called "Diluvium." Rut 

 facts (stubborn things !) bave accumulated in such 

 numbers that it is now totally impossible to hold 

 such an idea — much as many people may wish it. It 

 is seen that the period of time when such beds were 

 formed was as peculiar as those of other formations, 

 and that the physical circumstances, if not the pecu- 

 liar life-forms, marked it off distinctly from the rest. 

 Hence the name now given to it of " Northern 

 Drift," or that other of the " Glacial period," which 

 latter I hold to be the most appropriate. 



The chief interest of the " Glacial epoch " is the 

 way with which its facts connect tertiary life-forms 

 and geography with existing species and circum- 

 stances. The geologist is able to perceive there 

 was no break, such as was originally supposed, but 

 that the present epoch is intimately related to all 

 that have gone before, and is, in fact, a continuation 

 of many of their circumstances. It therefore links 

 the present with the past, in a way for which know- 

 ledge-seekers cannot be too thankful. Who would 

 imagine the scattered, disunited beds of clay, or 

 gravel, or sand, could have been so fruitful in geo. 

 logical and even general interest ? 



Some of my companions may boast of an origin 

 quite the opposite to my own. Theirs deals with 

 intense heat, mine with almost as extreme cold. Of 

 course I am speaking of my present existence as a 

 " boulder," for before I entered that state I formed 



