CHAPTER XXIV 



THE WHITE ANT 



THE insignificant termite throughout Africa miscalled 

 an "ant" is one of the Powers of that Continent. 

 Outside the tropical area, the earth-worm the world 

 over is Nature's greatest agriculturist ; for year by year 

 it transposes the exhausted subsoil from below and the 

 refreshed superficial crust, to the extent so Darwin 

 tells us of ten tons per acre. 1 But in the Tropics the 

 earth-worm has no place. A sun-baked surface hard as 

 adamant defies his feeble fossorial efforts. But Nature 

 has provided a substitute no less efficient. What the 

 earth-worm accomplishes for man in the Temperate Zones, 

 that the termite performs in the Torrid. By their means, 

 alternately in either case, the refreshed and fertilising 

 crust is buried deep beneath an exhausted subsoil ; with 

 automatic regularity the two strata change places. Thus, 

 and thus only, is the sequence of plant-life (which connotes 

 that of all life) maintained and assured. 



Throughout the length and breadth of Tropical Africa 

 the operations of the white ant stand patent and 

 conspicuous to view they challenge attention. The 

 landscape is dotted with ant-hills. They stand ubiq- 



1 On the tidal sandflats of the Northumbrian coast, Mr George Bolam 

 has estimated that the sand-worms (locally known as lug-worms) shift 

 yearly as much as 887 tons per acre. See his Birds of Northumberland and 

 the Eastern Borders^ p. 642. 



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