EATING INSECTS. 161 



he adds, ' to wipe it off, I was astonished to find the 

 glasses fixed to the wall, not suspended in fi-ames as 

 1 had left them, but completely surrounded with 

 incrustation, cemented by the white ants, who had 

 actually eaten up the deal fiames and backboards, and 

 the greater part of the paper, and left the glasses up- 

 held by the incrustation, or covered way, which they 

 had formed during their depredation.'* 



They make their way with the utmost ease into 

 trunks and boxes, even though made of mahogany, 

 and destroy papers and everything they contain, con- 

 structing their galleries, and sometimes taking up 

 their abode in them. One very serious consequence 

 of this, as Humboldt informs us, is, that throughout 

 all the warmer parts of equinoctial America, where 

 these and other destructive insects abound, it is in- 

 finitely rare to find papers which go fifty or sixty 

 years back.| Cloth, linen, and books are equally to 

 their taste, and in one night they will devour all the 

 boots and shoes left in their way. 



Mr Smeathman informs us, that ^ The tree 

 termites, when they get within a box, often make a 

 nest there, and, being once in possession, destroy it 

 at their leisure. They did so to the pyramidal box 

 which contained my compound microscope. It was 

 of mahogany, and I had left it in the store of Go- 

 vernor Campbell, of Tobago, for a few months, while 

 I made the tour of the Leeward Islands. On my 

 return, I found these insects had done much da- 

 mage in the store, and, among other things, had 

 taken possession of the microscope, and eaten every- 

 thing about it, except the glass, or metal, and the 

 board on which the pedestal is fixed, with the 

 drawers under it, and the things inclosed. Their 

 cells were built all round the pedestal and the tube, 



* Oriental Memoirs, i, 362. 

 t Pol. Ess. on New Spain, iv, 135. 

 VOL. XII. 14* 



