244 INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 



floors ; or, boring through the posts and supports of the 

 building-, enter the roof, and construct there their gal- 

 leries in various directions. If a post be a convenient 

 path to the roof, or has any weight to support, whicli 

 how they discover is not easily conjectured, they will 

 fill it with their mortar, leaving only a trackway for 

 themselves ; and thus, as it were, convert it from wood 

 into stone, as hard as many kinds of free-stone. In 

 this manner they soon destroy houses, and sometimes 

 even whole villages when deserted by their inhabitants, 

 so that in two or three years not a vestige of them will 

 remain. 



These insidious insects are not less expeditious in 

 destroying the wainscoting, shelves, and other fixtures 

 of a house than the house itself. With the most con- 

 summate art and skill they eat away all the inside of 

 what they attack, except a few fibres here and there 

 which exactly suffice to keep the two sides, or top and 

 bottom, connected, so as to retain the appearance of so- 

 lidity after the reality is gone ; and all the while they 

 carefully avoid perforating the surface, unless a book 

 or any other thing that tempts them should be stand- 

 ing upon it. Kasmpfer, speaking of the wliite ants of 

 Japan, gives a remarkable instance of the rapidity with 

 which these miners proceed. Upon rising one morn- 

 ing he observed that one of their galleries of the tliick- 

 ness of his little finger had been formed across his 

 table ; and, upon a further examination, he found that 

 they had bored a passage of that thickness up one foot of 

 the table, formed a gallery across it, and then pierced 

 down another foot into the floor : all this was done 

 in the few hours that intervened between his retiring 



