CARPENTERS. 105 



save their ruling instinct as laborious as the hardest-driven 

 son of Afric. Instead of black, these, however, might be dusky, 

 or they might be yellow ; but, of whatever colour, they must, 

 of necessity, belong to that division of their tribe which, from 

 the woody material in which they work (using their powerful 

 jaws as a chisel), are denominated Carpenters. Huber gives 

 an interesting description of these labourers' excavated dwell- 

 ings ; though, from their working under cover, he could not 

 follow them in their operations. A fragment of wood, cut from 

 the root or trunk of a tree where one of their colonies may be 

 established, w^ould give, therefore, to our readers as good a 

 view though, to all, we will not say as clear a notion of their 

 curious architecture as Huber himself was able to obtain. At 

 all events, it is no fault of the clever builders, if they see nothing 

 but a bored, mis-shapen mass, where lie beheld, with wonder, 

 " streets ' looking as sombre as the smoke-dyed lanes of 

 London the structures of the " Jet Ants '' always partaking 

 of their own sombre hue, "galleries," horizontal and parallel, 

 following the circular direction of the layers of wood, and 

 communicating by oval apertures, " colonades" " arcades" 

 " lodges" " vestibules" and " chambers" divided by wails, 

 reduced, sometimes, by laborious chiselling, to the thinness of 

 a sheet of paper. 



Such are a few and a few only of the groups in activity 

 the labours in progress, within and about the oak ; but under 



