498 NATURAL HISTORY. 



are speedily found by the labourers, who enclose a pair in a clay 

 cell from which they never emerge. The male soon dies, 

 but the female, after rapidly increasing to nearly three inches 

 in length and one in breadth, continues to lay eggs unceas- 

 ingly for a very long time. This cell becomes the nucleus 

 of the hive, and round it all the other cells and galleries are 

 built. 



These insects are terribly destructive, as they eat through 

 wooden beams, furniture, &c., leaving only a thin shell, which 

 is broken down with the least extra weight, and many are 

 the occasions when an unsuspecting individual, on seating 

 himself 011 an apparently sound sofa or chair, finds himself, 

 like Belzoni in the Pyramid, reposing among a heap of dust 

 and splinters. 



Mr. Gumming describes the habitations of the White Ant in 

 these terms : 



" Throughout the greater part of the plains frequented by 

 blesboks, numbers of the sunbaked hills or mounds of clay 

 formed by the white ants occur. The average height of the 

 ant-hills in these districts is from two to three feet. They 

 are generally distant from another from one to three hundred 

 yards, being more or less thickly placed in different parts. 

 These ant-hills are of the greatest service to the hunter, en- 

 abling him with facility to conceal himself on the otherwise 

 open plain." 



THE CADDIS-FLY. 



This fly is well known to every angler both in its larva 

 and in its perfect state. The larva is a soft white worm, 

 of which fishes are exceedingly fond, and it therefore requires 

 some means of defence. It accordingly actually makes for 

 itself a movable house of sand, small stones, straws, bits of 

 shells, or even small living shells, in which it lives in perfect 

 security, and crawls about in search of food, dragging its 

 house after it. When it is about to become a pupa, it spins 

 a strong silk grating over the entrance of its case, so that 

 the water necessary for its respiration can pass through, but 



