186 CONCHOLOGIST’S COMPANION. 
nually employ themselves in perforating animal sub- 
stances, and enabling the elements speedily to decom- 
pose and dissipate them. 
Changes conducive to the general benefit are conti- 
nually going on in the animal and vegetable kingdoms ; 
for nothing is imperfect. Their various productions 
successively experience a gradual, or rapid deteriora- 
tion, in accordance with the character of each, and 
recede from the sites they occupy, in order to make 
room for others. When aged trees, or even forests, 
particularly in the East, are overthrown by a tornado, 
or partially consumed by fire, innumerable agents 
hasten to complete their demolition; the Termites, 
especially, are so expeditious, and effectual in their 
operations, that companies of them have been known 
to destroy, and carry away, in the course of a week, 
the bodies of the largest trees. They clear the 
ground, and afford room for vegetable productions 
of various kinds, which rapidly assert their right, 
and occupy the places which nature has assigned 
them. Ruined houses also, frequently, become a 
prey to these indefatigable insects; nay, even the 
sites of populous villages, when abandoned by their 
inhabitants, as is frequently the case in Arabia and 
in Senegal, have, by their agency, in the course of two 
or three years, been covered with grass, or trees, and 
not the vestige of a single post has remained. 
