CARPENTERS. 105 



save their ruling instinct as laborious as the hardest-driven 

 son of Afric. Instead of black, these, however, might be 

 dusky, or they might be yellow ; but, of whatever colour, 

 they must, of necessity, belong to that division of their tribe 

 which, from the woody material in which they work (using 

 their powerful jaws as a chisel), are denominated Carpenters. 

 Huber gives an interesting description of these labourers' ex- 

 cavated dwellings ; though, from their working under cover, 

 he could not follow them in their operations. A fragment of 

 wood, cut from the root or trunk of a tree where one of their 

 colonies may be established, would give, therefore, to our 

 readers as good a view though, to all, we will not say as clear 

 a notion of their curious architecture as Huber himself was 

 able to obtain. At all events, it is no fault of the clever build- 

 ers, if they see nothing but a bored, mis-shapen mass, where he 

 beheld, with wonder, " streets'" looking as sombre as the smoke- 

 dyed lanes of London the structures of the "Jet Ants" 

 always partaking of their own sombre hue, "galleries" hori- 

 zontal and parallel, following the circular direction of the 

 layers of wood, and communicating by oval apertures, 

 " colonades, " "arcades," "lodges," "vestibules," and "chambers," 

 divided by walls, reduced, sometimes, by laborious chiselling, 

 to the thinness of a sheet of paper. 



Such are a few and a few only of the groups in activity 

 the labours in progress, within and about the oak ; but under 



