398 SCIENTIFIC ILLUSTRATIONS [Wor 



indefatigable labourers. The strength of these insects is still 

 more striking when one considers the edifices they are able to 

 construct. Man is proud of his works ; but what are they after 

 all in comparison with those of the ant, taking the relative 

 heights into consideration ? The termite or white ant constructs 

 habitations many yards in height, which are so firmly and 

 solidly built that the buffaloes are able to mount them and 

 use them as observatories ; they are made of particles of wood 

 joined together by a gummy substance, and are able to resist 

 even the force of a hurricane. The largest pyramid in Egypt 

 is only 146 yards high, that is, about ninety times the average 

 height of man ; whereas the nests of the termites are a thousand 

 times the height of the insect which constructs them. Their 

 habitations are thus twelve times higher than the largest 

 specimen of architecture raised by human hands. We men 

 are, therefore, far beneath these little insects so far as strength 

 and the spirit of working go. Let us contemplate their work 

 and renew our labours. I. 



The Changes of the World. 



" The fashion of the world passeth away." On every hand 

 we see the law of mutation at work. Governments, systems 

 of thought, our own bodies, our cities, and even the sea-board 

 of our coasts, bear testimony to the fact that there is no such, 

 thing in this world as permanence of form. To the mind that 

 longs to ground itself upon something that is immutable, it 

 seems not only paradoxical, but even an appalling fact, that the 

 only certain law in the physical world is the law of change. 

 Yet so it is, and so it appears to have ever been. Geological 

 facts concerning our world convince us that it began its career 

 as an incandescent mass of molten matter, that it passed through 

 a period of refrigeration ; that, as a consequence of that process, 

 and of the attendant and necessary chemical combinations and 

 changes, a solid crust was slowly evolved ; that the elaboration 

 of oceans and continents in the forms in which we now behold 

 them has been the work of periods of time, so vast that it is 

 impossible for the most powerful imagination to describe or even 

 to conceive of them ; and that yet, notwithstanding all these 



