WHITE- ANTS. 107 



eye, but the least touch suffices to bring down the ap- 

 parently solid structure, like a house of cards, amidst a 

 cloud of blinding dust. If, however, as in the case of 

 the supporting posts of a house, any incumbent weight 

 has to be sustained, they have the instinct to guard against 

 the crash which would involve themselves in ruin, by 

 gradually filling up the hollowed posts with a sort of 

 mortar, leaving only a slender way for their own travel ; 

 thus the posts are changed from wood to stone, and re- 

 tain their solidity. 



Forbes in his Oriental Memoirs * has recorded a 

 curious, but by no means unusual example of the ravages 

 of the termites. Having had occasion to shut up an 

 apartment, he observed, on returning after a few weeks, a 

 number of the well-known covered ways leading across 

 the room to certain engravings hung in frames. The 

 glasses appeared to be uncommonly dull, and the frames 

 covered with dust. " On attempting," says he, " to wipe it 

 ofiP, I was astonished to find the glasses fixed to the wall, 

 not suspended in frames as I left them, but completely 

 surrounded by an incrustation cemented by the white 

 ants, who had actually eaten up the deal frames and 

 backboards, and the greater part of the paper, and left 

 the glasses upheld by the incrustation or covered way, 

 which they had formed during their depredations." 



Smeathman tells of a pipe of old Madeira wine hav- 

 ing been tapped and entirely lost by a band of these 

 insects, who had taken a fancy to the oak staves of the 



* Vol. i., p. 362. 



