198 THE WORLD'S LUMBER ROOM. 



reached perfection, and begin, as they do at once, to 

 decay. 



But for the termites there would not be a forest left 

 in the world, for the dead would choke the living; then 

 the absence of foliage would so alter the climate that 

 droughts would ensue, and the land would be turned into 

 a desert ; so that, as Mr. Smeathman says, mankind would 

 probably suffer less from the loss of one or two of the 

 larger animals than it would from the extermination of 

 the termites. They seldom attack a healthy tree, and 

 probably when they appear to do so it will be found that 

 disease of some sort has really begun its inroads ; but any 

 stake in a hedge which has not taken root they at once 

 destroy. If the bark be sound they enter at the bottom, 

 and completely hollow it out ; otherwise they first cover 

 it carefully with clay, as, though blind, they will not work 

 in the light. It must be confessed that they do not dis- 

 tinguish as one could wish between wood that is useful 

 and wood that is useless to man ; dead wood is never 

 anything but dead wood to them, and thus they have been 

 known to destroy all the timber-work of a spacious apart- 

 ment in a few nights, so carefully concealing their ravages, 

 however, that their presence could not be suspected. 



In a single night in Japan they have made a tunnel 

 as thick as a man's little finger through the floor, up one 

 leg of a table, across the top, and down another leg. 



Some large species begin work several feet below the 

 foundations of a house, and tunnel their way up through 

 the floors, and into the furniture, the position of which 

 they seem to know with the utmost accuracy. The only 



