476 HOMES WITHOUT HANDS. 



legged Black Ants ; they never tire ; their organs of motion seem 

 endowed with the same power as is ascribed by physiologists to 

 the muscles of the human heart, by which that part of the frame 

 never becomes fatigued, and which may be imparted to all our 

 organs in that higher sphere to which we fondly hope to rise. 



"Where do these Ants get their moisture? Our house was 

 built on a hard, ferruginous conglomerate, in order to be out of 

 the way of the White Ant, but they came despite the precaution ; 

 and not only were they in this sultry weather able individually 

 to moisten soil to the consistency of mortar for the formation of 

 galleries, which in their way of working is done by night (so that 

 they are screened from the observation of birds by day in passing 

 and repassing toward any vegetable matter they may wish to de- 

 vour), but, when their inner chambers were laid open, these were 

 also surprisingly humid; yet there was no dew, and the house 

 being placed on a rock, they could have no subterranean passage 

 to the bed of the river, which ran about three hundred yards 

 below the hill. Can it be that they have the power of combining 

 the oxygen and hydrogen of their vegetable food by vital force 

 as to form water?" 



In corroboration of this opinion, Dr. Livingstone mentions an in- 

 sect found in Angola, and which is allied to the common cuckoo- 

 spit (Aphrophora spuraaria) of England, which has the property 

 of pouring out great quantities of water, so that a group of seven 

 or eight insects will produce three or four pints of water in the 

 course of the night. After stating that he believes the water to 

 be produced, not from the sap of the tree, but from the atmos- 

 phere, he proceeds as follows : 



" Finding a colony of these insects busily distilling on a branch 

 of the Ricinus communis, or castor-oil plant, I denuded about 

 twenty inches of the bark on the tree-side of the insects, and 

 scraped away the inner bark, so as to destroy all the ascending 

 vessels. I also cut a hole in the side of the branch, reaching to 

 the middle, and then cut out the pith and internal vessels. The 

 distillation was then going on at the rate of one drop in each 

 sixty-seven seconds, or about two ounces five and a half drams 

 in twenty-four hours. Next morning the distillation, so far from 

 being affected by the attempt to stop the supplies, supposing they 

 had come up through the branch from the tree, was increased to a 

 drop every five seconds, or twelve drops per minute, making one 

 pint in every twenty-four hours. 



