TERMITID.E — WIIITE-ANTS. 135 



Ant-bills are formed, is so well prepared by the industrious 

 Termites, Termes beUicosus, that it is used for the floors 

 of rooms in South Africa both by the Hottentots and 

 farmers.^ 



Mr. Southey states that in Brazil "the Spaniards pul- 

 verize the nests of the Termites, and with the powder form 

 a flooring for their houses, which becomes as hard as stone, 

 and on which it is said no fleas or other insects will harbor."^ 

 The early Spanish settlers built the walls of their houses of 

 the same earth ; and some of which, which were erected in 

 the seventeenth century, are said to be still in existence.^ 



Ant-hills, or rather the Termites which inhabit them, 

 have also been used as an instrument of perhaps the most 

 infernal torture the ingenuity of man has ever invented. 

 For, in South Africa, at one time, the wretched victim, 

 whether prisoner of war or offending subject, having been 

 smeared with some oily substance, was partially interred in 

 one of these heaps, and, if not first roasted to death by the 

 burning sun, was literally devoured alive by the myriads of 

 insects which have their habitation there. It has been as- 

 serted, that even some Euglishmen have met this dreadful 

 fate.* 



At Unyamwezi, in the lake regions of Central Africa, 

 the natives chew the clay of Ant-hills as a substitute when 

 their tobacco fails. They call this clay "sweet earth." It 

 is said the Arabs have also tried it without other effects 

 than nausea.^ 



The goldsmiths of Ceylon employ the powdered clay of 

 Ant-hills in preference to all other substances in the prepa- 

 ration of crucibles and moulds for their fine castings, for so 

 delicate is the trituration to which the Termites subject this 

 material;*^ and Knox says, "the people use this finer clay 

 to make their earthen gods of, it is so pure and fine.'" 



Termites, as an article of food, are eaten by the inhabit- 

 ants of many countries. Mr. Koenig, in his essay on the 

 history of these insects, read before the Society of Natural- 



1 S. Africa, p. 315. 



^ Hist, of Brazil, i. 319. 



3 Kidder and Fletcher, Brazil, p. 442. 



^ Barter's Dorp and Veld, p. 81. 



5 Burton's Central Africa, i. 202. 



6 Tennent, Nat. Hist, of Ceylon, p. 412. 

 ^ Knox, Ceylon, Ft. I. cli. vi. p. 24. 



