166 INSECT MISCELLANIES. 



" The large species, " he says, " are not only much 

 more destructive, but more difficult to be guarded 

 against, than those of trees (Termites Arborum), since 

 they make their approaches chiefly under ground, de- 

 scending below the foundations of houses and stores 

 at several feet from the surface, and rising again 

 either in the floors, or entering at the bottoms of the 

 posts, of which the sides of the buildings are com- 

 posed, which they bore quite through, following the 

 course of the fibres to the top, or making lateral per- 

 forations and cavities here and there as they proceed. 



" While some are engaged in gutting the posts, 

 others ascend from them, entering a rafter or some 

 other part of the roof. If they once find the thatch, 

 which seems to be a favourite food, they soon bring 

 up wet clay, and build their pipes or galleries through 

 the roof in various directions, as long as it will sup- 

 port them ; sometimes eating the palm-tree leaves and 

 branches of which it is composed, and, perhaps, (for 

 variety seems very pleasing to them,) the rattan, or 

 other running plant which is used as a cord to tie the 

 various parts of the roof together, and that to the 

 posts which support it : thus, with the assistance of 

 the rats, who, during the rainy season, are apt to 

 shelter themselves there, and to burrow through it, 

 they very soon ruin the house, by weakening the fas- 

 tenings and exposing it to the wet. In the mean time 

 the posts will be perforated, in every direction, as full 

 of holes as that timber in the bottoms of ships which 

 has been bored by the worms, the fibrous and knotty 

 parts, which are the hardest, being left to the last. 



"They sometimes, in carrying on this business, 

 find (I will not presume to say how) that the post 

 has some weight to support ; and then, if it is a con- 

 venient track to the roof, or is itself a kind of wood 

 agreeable to them, they bring their mortar, and fill 

 all or most of the cavities, leaving* the necessary 



