54 ROUGHING IT IN SOUTHERN INDIA 



existence, and he would catch them in the air as both he 

 and they were flying. 



These white ants — termites is their scientific name — 

 will eat up anything ; for example, an umbrella left over- 

 night on a window-sill had only a few rags hanging to its 

 ribs by morning. They are clever bridge-builders, too, 

 and have to be reckoned with in Indian household arrange- 

 ments. A leather trunk of mine, raised from the stone 

 floor on the bottoms of four glass bottles, and quite a foot 

 away from the wall — an outside one certainly, so we ought 

 to have watched better — was forgotten, trusting perhaps 

 to the precautions taken. At any rate no one went to that 

 box for some little time — and quite a little time may be 

 too long to leave things ; when some one did at length 

 open it again it was found to be tunnelled through and 

 through by white ants. As its contents — my clothes — 

 were picked up they hung in rags and shreds, just like the 

 umbrella. The box was full, but nothing had escaped the 

 ravages of these marauders, nor was anything in it of the 

 least use again. Wool there was none, all the things being 

 of silk or muslin. Looking round behind the box we 

 found two bridges as thick as a finger, and quite twelve 

 inches long, one at either end, about two inches above the 

 floor, of red white-ant mud. These bridges are breakable 

 but not crumbly, being pretty stiffly compacted of some 

 sort of red clay which the little builders know where to find 

 — never using any other — and are cemented with their own 

 saliva. 



Their nests are conical mounds, wonders of engineering 

 within, being chambered and having galleries. Very ordin- 

 ary-sized nests are six and seven feet high ; the smaller 

 ones are used as ovens by native travellers. Large crops 

 of minute mushrooms are often found growing all over 

 these mounds, and can be sliced off like mustard and cress, 

 being just about as high ; their tiny white tops are not 



