NEUROPTERA. 



41, 



sanctuary, you may pick up and carry away from the cell which 

 contains them the precious couple without the workers in attendance 

 on them interrupting their work, for they are blind. 



They never venture in sight except in extreme cases. No one is 

 ignorant of the terrible destruction these insects occasion to the 

 works of man. Invisible to those whom they threaten, they push on 

 their galleries to the very walls of their houses. They perforate the 

 floors, the beams, the wood-work, the furniture, respecting always the 

 surface of the objects attacked in such a manner that it is impossible 

 to be aware of their hidden ravages. They even take care to prevent 

 the buildings they eat away from falling by filling up with mortar the 

 parts they have hollowed out. But these precautions are only 

 employed if the place seems suitable, and if they intend to prolong 

 their sojourn there. In the other case they destroy the wood with 

 inconceivable rapidity. They have been known, in one single nio-ht, 

 to pierce the whole of a table leg from top to bottom, and then the 

 table itself; and then, still continuing to pierce their way, to descend 

 through the opposite leg, after having devoured the contents of a 

 trunk placed upon the table. On account of the devastations which 

 they occasion, Linnaeus has called the white ant the greatest plague 

 of the Indies. 



There exist in France two species of termites, the Ten?ies hiciftigus, 

 a little insect of a brilliant black (at least in the male), with russety 

 legs, which is common enough in the moors of Gascony; and the 

 Yellow-necked White Ant (Tennes fiavicollis)^ which lives in the 

 interior of trees and does a great deal of mischief in Spain and in the 

 south of France to olive and other precious trees, whilst the first 

 attacks oak and fir trees. Latreille established that it is the Tennes 

 lucifugtis which causes such havoc at La Rochelle, at Rochefort, at 

 Saintes, at Tournay-Charente, in the Isle of Aix, &c., where many 

 houses have been completely undermined by these terrible insects. 

 But M. de Quatrefages'^ has proved that the habits of the termes 

 found in towns differ in many essential points from the habits of 

 termes in the country. And so it is most probable that the former 

 belong to an exotic species, which must have been unfortunately 

 imported into France by a merchant vessel. According to M. Bobe- 

 Moreau,t it was only in 1797 that termites were discovered for the 

 first time in Rochefort, in a house which had stood for a long while 



* "Note sur les Termites de la Rochelle. " Annaks des Sciences A'aturelles, 

 3e serie, tome xx., p. 18. 1853. 



t "Memoire sur les Termites observes a Rochefort." Saintes, 1843. 



