Packard] INSECTS AS ARCHITECTS. 297 



structed in the mud, or in rude tunnels beneath stones at 

 the bottom of streams and ponds, or they supported their 

 arched ways on the stalks of aquatic plants. These builders 

 of Devonian times, in a way unconscious to themselves, tried 

 the strength of their rude building material, practised the 

 art of the mason, and applied the principles of the geome- 

 trician in their rough and ready mechanics. 



In the Coal formation we find wings of fossil insects 

 closely resembling our white ants, and belonging, perhaps, 

 in the same family. Now some species of tliese insects are 

 among the most skilled architects in the insect world. We 

 shall see farther on how remarkable their large roomy dwell- 

 ings are. Otiiers construct tunnels in deca3'ed trees. Our 

 common white ant {Termes Jlavipes) is known either to 

 mine the roots of grape vines, the trunks of elms, pine 

 stumps, or to run secret galleries in the sills of houses, or 

 to live under flat stones, with nests apparently like those of 

 ants found in the same situations. Different species so far 

 as we know have quite different habits. For example, the 

 nests of Termes arborum are described by Smeathman as 

 "surrounding the branch of a tree at the height of seventy 

 or eiglity feet ; and (though but rarely of so large a size) as 

 big as a very great sugar cask. They are composed of small 

 particles of wood and the various gums and juices of trees, 

 combined witli, i)erhaps, those of the animals, and worked 

 by these little industrious creatures into a paste, and so 

 moulded into innumerable little cells of very different and 



irregular forms These nests are very compact, and 



so strongly attached to the boughs on which they arc fixed 

 that there is no detaching them but by cutting them in 

 pieces, or sawing off the branch." The nest communicates 

 with the ground by covered wa3'S leading to the roots of the 

 trees. Again he describes some nests that resemble the 

 complex nests of Tennes heUicosus, but are smaller and of 

 simpler construction. They are built in sandy plains, and 



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