146 NATURAL HISTORY. [CH. VIII. 



food, however, is wood, and so infinite is the multi- 

 tude of assailants, and such the excellence of their 

 tools, that all the timber work of a spacious apart- 

 ment is often destroyed by them in a night. Out- 

 wardly, every thing appears as if untouched; for 

 these wary depredators, and this is what constitutes 

 the greatest singularity of their history, carry on all 

 their operations by sap or mine, destroying first the 

 inside of solid substances, and scarcely ever attack- 

 ing their outside, until first they have concealed it 

 and their operations with a coat of clay." 



An engineer having returned from surveying the 

 country, left his trunk on a table ; the next morning 

 he found not only all his clothes destroyed by white 

 ants or cutters, but his papers also, and the latter in 

 such a manner, that there was not a bit left of an 

 inch square. The black lead of his pencils was con- 

 sumed, the clothes were not entirely cut to pieces 

 and carried away, but appeared as if moth-eaten, 

 there being scarcely a piece as large as a shilling 

 that was free from small holes ; and it was farther 

 remarkable, that some silver coin, which was in the 

 trunk, had a number of black specks on it, caused 

 by something so corrosive, that they could not be 

 rubbed off, even with sand. " One night," says 

 Kemper, " in a few hours, they pierced one foot of 

 the table, and having in that manner ascended, car- 

 ried their arch across it, and then down, through the 

 middle of the other foot, into the floor, as good luck 

 would have it, without doing any damage to the 

 papers left there."* 



The destructiveness of these insects is, perhaps, 

 one of the most efficient means of checking the per- 

 nicious luxuriance of vegetation within the tropics ; 

 no large animals could effect in months what the 

 white ant can execute in weeks ; the largest trees 

 which, falling, would rot, and render the air pesti- 



* Hist. Japan, vol. ii. p. 127. 



