78 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [ANNO 1781. 



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 directions, 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 dispatch and astonishing cunning : for, 

 except a shelf has something standing on it, as a book, or any thing 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 possession of it.* 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 on 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 every thing in it before the 

 morning. On these accounts we are careful to set all our chests and boxes on 

 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 every thing in them : a vast deal of vermin also would 

 harbour under, such as cock-roaches, centipedes, millepedes, scorpions, ants, 

 and various other noisome insects. 



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 at the bottom, and eat all but the bark, which will re- 

 main, and exhibit the appearance of a solid stick, which some vagrant colony of 

 ants or other insects often shelter in till the winds disperse it ; but if they cannot 

 trust the bark, they cover the whole stick with their mortar, and it then 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 on a very 

 small tap with your walking stick, the whole stake, though apparently as thick 

 as your arm, and 5 or (i feet long, loses its form, and disappearing like a shadow, 



* " The white ants arc transparent as glass, and bite so forcibly, that in the space of one night 

 alone they can eat their way through a thick wooden chest of goods, and make it as full of holes, a* 

 if it had been shot through with hail-shot," Bosnian's Guinea, p. 270", 277, 493. — Orig. 



