814 Insect Architecture. 



hide ourselves in the ragged tops of them when we took up 

 stands to shoot at deer or wild beasts."* Bishop Heber saw 

 a number of these high ant-hills in India, near the principal 

 entrance of the Sooty or Moorshedabad river. " Many of 

 them," he says, " were five or six feet high, and probably 

 seven or eight feet in circumference at the base, partially 

 overgrown with grass and ivy, and looking at a distance like 

 the stumps of decayed trees. I think it is Ctesias, among 

 the Greek writers, who gives an account alluded to by Lucian 

 in his ' Cock,' of monstrous ants in India, as large as foxes. 

 The falsehood probably originated in the stupendous fabrics 

 which they rear here, and which certainly might be supposed 

 to be the work of a much larger animal than their real 

 architect."! Herodotus has a similar fable of the enormous 

 size and brilliant appearance of the ants of India. 



Nor is it only in constructing dwellings for themselves 

 that the termites of Africa and of other hot climates employ 

 their masonic skill. Though, like our ants and wasps, they 

 are almost omnivorous, yet wood, particularly when felled 

 and dry, seems their favourite article of food ; but they have 

 an utter aversion to feeding in the light, and always eat 

 their way with all expedition to the interior. It thence 

 would seem necessary for them either to leave the bark of a 

 tree, or the outer portion of the beam or door of a house, 

 undevoured, or to eat in open day. They do neither ; but 

 are at the trouble of constructing galleries of clay, in which 

 they can conceal themselves, and feed in security. In all 

 their foraging excursions, indeed, they build covert ways, by 

 which they can go out and return to their encampment. { 



Others of the species (for there are several), instead of 

 building galleries, exercise the art of miners, and make their 

 approaches under ground, penetrating beneath the founda- 

 tion of houses or areas, and rising again either through the 

 floors, or by entering the bottom of the posts that support 

 the building, when they follow the course of the fibres, and 



* Jobson's Gambia, in Purchas's Pilgrim, ii. p. 1570. 



t Heber's Journal, vol. i. p. 248. 



+. Smeathman, in Phil. Trans., vol. Ixxi. 



