HYMENOPTEBA. 245 



with all its saloons, vaulted roofs, partitions and 

 galleries, in seven or eight hours. If they begin a 

 story, and for want of moisture are unable to finish it, 

 they pull down again all the crumbling apartments that 

 are not covered in." 



Every one has heard of the destructive as well as 

 constructive qualities of the " White Ant ; " another 

 quotation from Kirby and Spence will illustrate both, 



" When they find their way into houses or warehouses 

 nothing less hard than metal or glass escapes their 

 ravages ; their favourite food, however, is wood of all 

 kinds, except the Teak, and Ironwood, which are the 

 only sorts known, that they will not touch ; and so 

 infinite are the multitudes of the assailants, and such is 

 the excellence of their tools, that all the timber- work of 

 a spacious apartment is often destroyed by them in a few 

 nights. Exteriorly, however, everything 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 and mine, 

 destroying utterly the inside of solid substances, and 

 scarcely ever attacking their outside until they have 

 first concealed it and their operations with a coating of 

 clay. A general similarity runs through the proceedings 

 of the whole tribe, but the large African species, called 

 by Smeathman Termes bellicosus, is the most formidable. 

 These insects live in large clay nests, from whence 

 they excavate tunnels all round, often to the extent of 

 several hundred feet ; from these they will descend a 

 considerable depth below the foundation of a house, and 

 rise again through the floors ; or, boring through the 

 posts and supports of the building, enter the roof and 

 construct their galleries in various directions. 



" If a post be a convenient path to the roof, or has 

 any weight to support, (how they discover it is not 

 easily conjectured), they will fill it with their mortar, 

 leaving only a track- way for themselves, and thus, as 

 it were, convert it from wood into stone as hard as 

 many kinds of freestone. In this manner they soon 



