i66 HAUNTS AND HOBBIES 



For some reason or other, I did not visit the nest 

 again for two or three days, and then I found, to my 

 extreme regret, that the towers had all disappeared. I 

 had omitted to give orders for their preservation, and 

 the gardeners had swept them away as disfiguring the 

 path. It was an untoward event which I have always 

 since much deplored, for I never again saw these 

 towers in course of erection, and in consequence many 

 matters in regard to the use and mode of construction 

 of the great ant-hills of which they were the com- 

 mencement, and which I had hoped to ascertain, remain 

 for me still enigmas. 



The white-ant hills when completed are tall, roughly 

 conical structures ; they are mostly from four to five 

 feet high, and have many very narrow but far pro- 

 truding buttresses. The earth of which they are com- 

 posed is extremely hard, so hard that it can only be 

 broken by a pickaxe, and even then with much 

 difficulty. When cut open they are found to be nearly 

 solid. They contain only some winding passages, and 

 a few large, hollow spaces, into which the passages lead. 

 The hollow towers that I saw in course of erection 

 must, therefore, be subsequently filled up, and also the 

 spaces between them. The use and purpose of these 

 mounds is to me a mystery, for the actual nest, so far 

 as my experience goes, is always beneath the surface 

 of the soil. 



With this notice of the white ants my diary for a 

 time again closes. It recommences after a lapse of 

 nearly two years, and in a station still further to the 

 north, and within not much more than thirty miles of 



