ClIAP. VI.] 



WHITE A^TS. 



253 



The White Ant. But of the insects of this order the 

 most noted are the white ants or termites (which are ants 

 only by a misnomer). They are, unfortunately, at once 

 ubiquitous and innumerable in every spot where the 

 climate is not too chilly, or the soil too sandy, for them to 

 construct their domed edifices. 



These they raise from a considerable depth under 

 ground, excavating the clay with their mandibles, and 

 moistening it wifli tenacious saliva 1 until it assume the 

 appearance, and almost the consistency, of sandstone. 

 So delicate is the trituration to which they subject this 

 material, that the goldsmiths of Ceylon employ the 

 powdered clay of the ant hills in preference to all other 

 substances in the preparation of crucibles and moulds 

 for their finer castings ; and KNOX says, " the people 

 use this clay to make their earthen gods of, it is so 

 pure and fine." 2 These structures the termites erect 

 with such perseverance and durability that they fre- 

 quently rise to the height of ten or twelve feet from 

 the ground, with a corresponding diameter. They are 



1 It becomes an interesting question 

 whence the termites derive the large 

 supplies of moisture with which they 

 not only temper the clay for the con- 

 struction of their long covered-ways 

 above ground, but for keeping their 

 passages uniformly damp and cool 

 below the surface. Yet their habits 

 in this particular are unvarying, in 

 the seasons of droughts as well as after 

 rain ; in the driest and least promis- 

 ing positions, in situations inaccessible 

 to drainage from above, and cut off by 

 rocks and impervious strata from 

 springs from below. Dr. Living- 

 stone, struck with this phenomenon 

 in Southern Africa, asks : " Can the 

 white ante possess the power of com- 

 bining the oxygen and hydrogen of 

 their vegetable food by vital force so 

 as to form water ? " Travels, p. 22. 

 And he describes at Angola an insect* 



resembling the Aphrophora spumaria ; 

 seven or eight individuals of which 

 distil several pints of water every 

 night, P. 414. It is highly probable 

 that the termites are endowed with 

 some such faculty : nor is it more re- 

 markable that an insect should com- 

 bine the gases of its food to produce 

 water, than that a fish should decom- 

 pose water in order to provide itself 

 with gas. FotmcROix found the con- 

 tents of the air-bladder in a carp to 

 be pure nitrogen. Yarrell, vol. i. p. 

 42. And the aquatic larva of the 

 dragon-fly extracts air for its respira- 

 tion from the water in which it is 

 submerged. A similar mystery per- 

 vades the inquiry whence plants under 

 peculiar circumstances derive the 

 water essential to vegetation. 



3 KNOX'S Ceylon, Part I. ch. vi. 

 p. 24. 



1 A.govdottif Bennett. 



