iNJ)iaECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 245 



to rest and his rising*. They make their way also with 

 the greatest ease into trunks and boxes, even though 

 made of mahogany, and destroy papers and every thing 

 they contain, constructing their galleries and sometimes 

 taking up their abode in them. Hence, as Humboldt 

 informs us, throughout all the warmer parts of equi- 

 noctial America, where these and other destructive in- 

 i-ects abound, it is infinitely rare to find papers which 

 go fifty or sixty years back*". In one night they will 

 devour ail the boots and shoes that are left in their 

 way ; cloth, linen, or books are equally to their taste ; 

 but they will not eat cotton, as Captain Green informs 

 me. I myself have to deplore that they entirely con- 

 sumed a collection of insects made for me by a friend 

 in India, more especially as it sickened him of the em- 

 ployment. In a word, scarcely any tiling, as I said be- 

 fore, but metal or stone comes amiss to them. Mr. 

 Sraeathraan relates, that a party of them once took a 

 fancy to a pipe of fine old Madeira, not for the sake of 

 the wine, almost the whole of which they let out, but 

 of the staves, which however I suppose were strongly 

 imbued with it, and perhaps on that account were not 

 less to the taste of our epicure Termites. Having left 

 a compound microscope in a warehouse at Tobago for 

 a few montiis, on his return he found that a colony of 

 a small species of white ant had established themselves 

 in it, and had devoured most of the wood-work, leaving 

 little besides the metal and glasses*^. A shorter period 

 sufficed for their demolition of some of Mr. Forbes's 



" Japan, ii. 127. * Political Essay on New Spain, iv. 135- 



' This account of the Termites is chiefly taken fro;n Sracathman in 

 Philos. Trans. {"81, and Percival's Ceylon, 301 — . 



