P OP ULAR MIS CELL ANY. 



285 



even dangerous to metals, and a piece of 

 lead is exhibited at South Kensington which 

 has been eaten into holes by them. Only 

 camphor will keep them away. The destruc- 

 tive powers last during the whole life of the 

 ant, and are exercised, in nearly equal de- 

 gree, in the stages of larva, pupa, and per- 

 fect insect. The termites are extremely 

 productive, and, were it not that they are 

 vei'y easily destroyed, might soon possess 

 the world. One female will lay in the neigh- 

 borhood of thirty-one million eggs in the 

 course of the year. The males and females 

 are endowed with wings at the pairing-season, 

 when they sometimes fill the air in their 

 flight. The majority of them lose their lives 

 at that time, else they would multiply so as 

 to make other existence intolerable. The 

 females which are not destroyed are taken 

 in hand by " workers," and imprisoned in a 

 large cell, where they lay their eggs, at the 

 rate of eighty thousand a day, which are at 

 once taken by the " workers " to their par- 

 ticular cells. The female holds within her 

 body, when pregnant, all the eggs she is 

 ever going to lay, and there are thirty-one 

 millions of them. The effect of breeding so 

 enormous a mass is to swell her body so that, 

 when she begins to lay, she will weigh a 

 thousand times as much as when she took 

 her pairing-flight. The wood-eating termite 

 makes its home underground, and approaches 

 the object it is going to consume by tunnel- 

 ing to it. Usually it follows the grain of 

 the wood, or whatever course may be most 

 convenient ; and sometimes it fills the hol- 

 low shell from which it has eaten the sub- 

 stance with a packing of mud ; and thus it 

 happens that posts, etc., which the ant has 

 eaten, do not give way. In all its operations 

 it shows high intelligence and a genius for 

 contrivance. 



African Roads.— According to Colonel 

 Sir C. W. Wilson, the roads over which the 

 land trade of equatorial Africa now passes 

 from the coast to the interior are mere foot- 

 paths, described by Prof. Drummond in his 

 book on " Tropical Africa " as being never 

 over a foot in breadth, beaten as hard as 

 adamant, and rutted beneath the level of the 

 forest-bed by centuries of native traffic. " As 

 a rule, these footpaths are marvelously di- 

 rect, running straight through everything. 



ridge and mountain and valley, never shy- 

 ing at obstacles, never turning aside to 

 breathe. Yet within this general straight- 

 forwardness there is a singular eccentricity 

 and indirectness in detail. Although the 

 African footpath is, on the whole, a bee-line, 

 not fifty yards of it are ever straight. And 

 the reason is not far to seek. If a stone is 

 encountered, no native will ever think of 

 removing it. Why should he ? It is easier 

 to walk around it. The next man who comes 

 that way will do the same. . . . Whatever 

 the cause, it is certain that, for persistent 

 straightforwardness in the general, and utter 

 vacillation and irresolution in the particular, 

 the African roads are unique in engineering. 

 No country in the world is better supplied 

 with paths ; every village is connected with 

 some other village, every tribe with the next 

 tribe ; and it is possible for the traveler to 

 cross Africa without being once off a beaten 

 track." 



Edncationa! Value of Phonetic Spelling. 



— Mr. Isaac Pitman, in a paper on economy 

 in education and in wi-itmg, stated to the 

 British Association that a million pounds 

 yearly are wasted by the present method of 

 teaching reading in the English elementary 

 schools. The first occupation of children in 

 schools is to learn to read, and they spend, at 

 the lowest reckoning, eight hours a week, dur- 

 ing the first four years of their school-life, 

 in gaining a certain amount of reading power. 

 An equal degree of proficiency might be 

 gained by using phonetically printed books 

 during the first two years, and by reading in 

 the present books afterward. The cost of 

 teaching reading to the children in the ele- 

 mentary schools is about two million pounds. 

 One half of this sum would be saved by the 

 use of an alphabet containing a letter for 

 each sound in the language. As reading is 

 now taught, the sound or pronunciation of 

 every word has to be learned independently 

 of the names of the letters that compose it, 

 and generally in spite of the names or sounds 

 of the letters ; but, by the use of letters that 

 make up the sound of a word, certainty and 

 celerity in the art of reading take the place 

 of doubt <and difficulty. In the discussion on 

 this paper. Dr. J. II. Gladstone said that 

 children should be taught the properties and 

 attributes of things in nature surrounding 



