WHITE ANT. 477 



nient 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 roads through it, and as fast as they take 

 away the wood, replace the vacancy with that material ; which 

 being worked together by them closer and more compactly than 

 human strength or art could ram it, when the house is pulled to 

 pieces, in order to examine if any of the posts are fit to be used 

 again, those of the softer kinds are often reduced almost to a shell, 

 and all, or a greater part, transformed from wood to clay, as 

 solid and as hard as many kinds of free-stone used for building in 

 England. It is much the same when the termites bellicosi get into 

 a chest or trunk, containing clothes and other things ; if the weight 

 above is great, or they are afraid of ants or other enemies, and 

 have time, they carry their pipes through, and replace a great 

 part with clay, running their galleries in various directions. The 

 tree termites, indeed, wheu they get within a box, often make 

 a nest there, and being once in possession, destroy it at their 

 leisure. 



When the termites attack trees and branches in the open air, 

 they sometimes vary their manner of doing it. If a stake in a 

 hedge has not taken root and vegetated, it becomes their business 

 to destroy it. If it has a good sound bark round it, they will 

 enter al the bottom, and eat all but the bark, which will remain, 

 and exhibit the appearance of a solid stick (which some vagrant 

 colony of ants or other insects often shelter in, till the winds dis- 

 perse it) ; but if they cannot trust the bark, they cover the whole 

 stick with their mortar, and then it looks as if it had been dipped 

 into thick mud that had been dried on. Under this covering they 

 work, leaving no more of the stick and bark than is barely suffi- 

 cient to support it, and frequently not the smallest particle ; so 

 that upon a very small tap with your walking-stick, the whole 

 stake, though apparently as thick as your arm, and five or six feet 

 long, loses its form, and, disappearing like a shadow, falls in 

 small fragments at your feet. 



The first object of admiration which strikes one upon opening 

 their hills, is the behaviour of the soldiers. If you make a breach 

 in a slight part of the building, and do it quickly with a strong 

 hoe, or pick-axe, in the space of a few seconds a soldier will run 

 out, and walk about the breach^ as if to see whether the enemy is 



