TERMITES. 349 



I shall end this work with brief descriptions of 

 two remarkable earth trespassers among the insects, 

 both of which are popularly called Ants, though, they 

 are as far apart as are the cat and the rabbit. 



Yet, diverse as they are in the scale of creation, 

 their resemblance to each other, both in appearance 

 and habits, is extraordinarily close. I have now before 

 me a box full of Termites and Travelling Ants, and I 

 am quite sure that no one who was not a practical 

 entomologist could distinguish between the Termites 

 and the Ants. In both there are the remarkable gra- 

 dations of soldier and labourer ; in both there is the 

 dislike to light; and in both there is the habit of 

 constructing for t themselves habitations which shall 

 keep from them the unwelcome rays of the sun. 



We will first take the Termites. 



The illustration on Cut 1 9 represents a portion of 

 the nest laid open, and is drawn from a specimen in 

 the British Museum. 



I have not space to relate the whole of the won- 

 derful life led by the various species of Termite, inas- 

 much as the whole of the present volume would not 

 suffice for such a biography. Suffice it to say that all 

 the Termites have the strongest objection to light, 

 and that they have various ways of protecting them- 

 selves from it. Some of them build galleries for 

 themselves, while some are content to burrow into 

 wood and similar substances, sometimes even boring 

 into trees, and eating out the whole of the interior, 

 and leaving nothing but a thin shell. 



As an example of the manner in which the Ter- 



