214 NATURAL HISTORY ESSAYS 



hours, and the anteater progressing at least as fast 

 as his pursuers can dig. 



The ant-bear employs its great claws not only 

 in carving out its subterranean home, but also 

 in obtaining its food. Although so bulky an 

 animal, it subsists entirely on termites — the 

 so-called " white ants " — which are only too 

 abundant in Africa, where their destructive habits 

 constitute them a veritable plague. There are 

 many species of these insects, which live together 

 in colonies, and inhabit elaborately-constructed 

 ant-hills encased in a hollow clay shell of 

 varying shape and size, some being conical 

 and others domed. The mounds often attain 

 a height of ten feet, and are extremely hard, 

 besides being so strong that they will support the 

 weight of a buffalo, a mounted man, or a giraffe. 

 On breaking through the external wall of sun- 

 baked clay, the ant-hill proper is seen to be a 

 wonderful structure, honey-combed with galleries, 

 and containing in the centre of all the queen ant, 

 a loathsome creature about two or three inches 

 long, whose head and thorax are but of the usual 

 size, though her white abdomen is hugely swollen 

 with eggs, which she can lay at the rate of sixty 

 per minute, or eighty thousand a day ! The tasks 

 of the ant-hill — excavation, foraging, and so forth 

 — are done by the swarming population of worker 

 ants, which though of very small size can employ 



