THE WHITE ANTS. 



long in the uninterrupted possession of such a warehouse, they 

 would not have left twenty pounds weight of wood remaining of 

 the whole building, and all that it contained. 



59. These insects are not less expeditious in destroying the 

 shelves, wainscotting, and other fixtures of a house, than the 

 house itself. They are for ever piercing and boring in all direc- 

 tions, and sometimes go out of the broadside of one post into that 

 of another joining to it ; but they prefer, and always destroy the 

 softer substances the first, and are particularly fond of pine and 

 fir-boards, which they excavate and carry away with wonderful 

 despatch and astonishing cunning ; for, unless a shelf has some- 

 thing standing upon it, as a book, or anything else which may 

 tempt them, they will not perforate the surface, but artfully 

 preserve it quite whole, and eat away all the inside, except a 

 few fibres which barely keep the two sides connected together, so 

 that a piece of an inch board which appears solid to the eye will 

 not weigh much more than two sheets of pasteboard of equal 

 dimensions, after these animals have been a little while in posses- 

 sion of it. 



60. In short the Termites are so insidious in their attacks, that 

 we cannot be too much on our guard against them : they will 

 sometimes begin and raise their works, especially in new houses, 

 through the floor. If you destroy the work so begun, and make 

 a fire upon the spot, the next night they will attempt to rise 

 through another part; and, if they happen to emerge under a 

 chest or trunk early in the night, will pierce the bottom, and 

 destroy or spoil everything in it before morning. On these 

 accounts care is taken by the inhabitants of the country to set all 

 their chests and boxes upon stones or bricks, so as to leave the 

 bottoms of such furniture some inches above the ground ; which 

 not only prevents these insects finding them out so readily, but 

 preserves the bottoms from a corrosive damp which would strike 

 from the earth through, and rot everything therein ; a vast deal 

 of vermin would also harbour under, such as cockroaches, centi- 

 pedes, millepedes, scorpions, ants, and various other noisome 

 insects. 



61. Kcempfer, speaking of the white ants of Japan, gives a 

 remarkable instance of the rapidity with which these miners 

 proceed. Upon rising one morning, he observed that one of their 

 galleries, of the thickness of his little finger, had been formed 

 across his table ; and upon a further examination he found that 

 they had bored a passage of that thickness up one foot of the 

 table, formed a gallery across it, and then pierced down another 

 foot into the floor ; all this was done in the few hours that inter- 

 vened between his retiring to rest and his rising. They make 



120 



