378 INSECTS ABROAD. 



the warmer parts of Europe, and at La Rochelle they have 

 quite got the upper hand of the inhabitants. Not even a 

 plank can be left for two days without being riddled by 

 these insects, which attack the wooden fences, the stakes to 

 which young trees are tied, and even the trees themselves. 

 They have quite taken possession of the houses. In the Pre- 

 fecture, for example, they have done terrible mischief. They 

 have burrowed into the woodwork to such an extent that on 

 one occasion when a clerk stumbled as he was going down 

 stairs, and caught at one of the oak posts of the balustrades, 

 his hand went completely into it and was buried up to the 

 wrist, the Termites having eaten out all the interior, and left 

 nothing but a mere shell scarcely thicker than the paper on 

 which this account is printed. There is every reason for be- 

 lieving that the Prefecture was the original head-quarters of the 

 Termites which were brought from St. Domingo by some rich 

 shipowners in the year 1780. Some men were engaged in build- 

 ing a house, which was afterwards converted into the Prefecture, 

 and the Termites gained admission by having got into some bales 

 of goods brought from St. Domingo. But, great as is the incon- 

 venience thus caused by these insects, it is as nothing when 

 compared with the irreparable damage which they have done to 

 the very history of the place. They contrived to reach in their 

 silent, darkling ways, the office in which were kept the archives 

 of the department, and every single paper was destroyed with- 

 out anyone knowing it. They did with the bundles of paper 

 exactly what they do with timber. They first bored into the 

 interior, and then set to work to eat all the paper. But they 

 took care not to bore through the upper sheets, nor to cut 

 through the edges, so no indication of the mischief was given 

 until one day it was discovered that nothing was left of the 

 archives except the upper sheets and the edges of the leaves. 



It is no matter of surprise that the Termites are popularly 

 called by the name of ants, for they really do possess many 

 analogies with the ants, and have many habits in common with 

 them. In both insects only the perfect males and females pos- 

 sess wings ; the neuters, or undeveloped insects, never having 

 even a semblance of wings. Then, even those which are winged 

 preserve their wings on a very frail tenure, only use them for a 

 short time, and of their own accord pull them off after they have 



