SOME TROUBLESOME INVADERS 369 



the presence of the culprits inside is obtained from an out- 

 side examination. A piece of timber may appear perfect 

 from the outside and yet be nothing but a shell through 

 which one can push the finger as through paper. Here, 

 again, termites were brought forcibly to the attention of 

 the author through their work of mining in some wooden 

 blocks used as supports for a poultry house in Mississippi. 

 One corner of this house, which had been erected for ex- 

 perimental purposes, suddenly began to settle. On exam- 

 ination, the wooden blocks under this corner were found 

 literally converted into mere hollow shells by the insects, 

 and consequently unable to support the weight of the 

 building. Drummond, in his " Tropical Africa," writes of 

 this phase of the termites' work as follows: "You build 

 your house, perhaps, and for a few months fancy you have 

 pitched upon the one solitary site in the country where 

 there are no white ants. But one day suddenly the door- 

 post totters and lintel and rafters come down together 

 with a crash. You look at a section of the wrecked timbers 

 and discover that the whole inside is eaten clean away. 

 The apparently solid logs of which the rest of the house is 

 built are now mere cylinders of bark, and through the 

 thickest of them you could push your little finger. Furni- 

 ture, tables, chairs, chests of drawers, everything made of 

 wood, is inevitably attacked, and in a single night a strong 

 trunk is often riddled through and through, and turned 

 into match-wood. There is no limit, in fact, to the depre- 

 dation of these insects, and they will eat books, or leather, 

 or cloth, or anything; and in many parts of Africa I 

 believe if a man lay down to sleep with a wooden leg it 

 would be a heap of sawdust in the morning." 



A most interesting account of damage by white ants 

 2n 



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