THE AARD VARK 215 



their saw-like mandibles in a very business-like 

 and destructive fashion, as many an African 

 traveller has found to his cost. 1 The soldier ants, 

 though forming but a hundredth part of the 

 community, are nevertheless of great importance. 

 They protect their fellow-termites, and are even 

 better armed than the workers, their huge and 

 heavy heads being garnished with sharp pincers 

 which they do not hesitate to use as fighting 

 weapons, hanging on with a bull-like tenacity 

 which does not relax even in death. Perhaps, 

 however, the most remarkable fact about these 

 insect communities is the circumstance that all the 

 individuals composing them are blind, so that they 

 prefer to work in the dark, making little covered 

 passages along which to travel when outside the 

 anthill : if kept exposed to sunlight, they die. 



The ant-bear takes little account of the 

 termites' stronghold, whilst his thick hide is 

 abundant protection against the bites of its warrior 

 sentinels. With his great claws he tears down 

 the side of the external dome, its stony hardness 

 dissolving into powder before so powerful an 

 attack : then penetrating to the citadel thrusts 

 his long snout into every crevice and cranny, 

 swallowing the termites wholesale, his twelve- 



i I have recently seen the remains of the square lintel of a door 

 (formerly built into a Government Office, at Jamestown, St. Helena) 

 completely ruined by termites. These destructive insects had 

 tunnelled great galleries in the wood, and had reduced it to a ragged, 

 unsightly mass. 



