994 The Zoologist— November, 1867. 



been informed on reliable authority that on one occasion they covered 

 some china-plates and dishes with their earth- works, and that with all 

 the cleaning and rubbing it was impossible to remove the marks left 

 by the edges of their tunnels ; it appeared to have affected the glaze 

 of the china : everyone knows that formic acid, made from ants, is 

 very corrosive. They are very fond of books and old papers, and will 

 devour half a book in a couple of days. I have never observed them 

 eating grain or collecting it ; in fact, as all their work and proceedings 

 are carried on either in the soil or under their covered ways, it is 

 rather difficult to notice their habits with any degree of accuracy. 

 All the stories about their having working parties, slaves, &c, must be 

 simple conjecture : when the earth is knocked off their work they crawl 

 about, in the utmost confusion, over one another, and if they happen 

 to be on the stem of a tree numbers fall down, and the others retire 

 down below, and soon bring up fresh earth to repair the damage. 



The white ant does not affect anything that is subject to move- 

 ment; thus you will seldom find it attack a door, a gate or the 

 lid of a box, but the door-posts or gate-posts and the bottom of the 

 box are soon eaten. It was supposed that from the vibration caused 

 by the engine going over the wooden sleepers of the railway, these 

 would escape this insect's ravages, but such is not the case; the 

 sleepers of certain kinds of wood are all eaten — the vibration in India 

 is not enough ; no doubt with a traffic over them like that of the 

 Great Western they would escape. 



This insect throws up large mounds of earth of a cone-like shape, 

 somewhat in appearance like the picture in atlases of the comparative 

 heights of mountains: these cones are all tunnelled through and 

 through with small tunnels, and one or two large shafts, some four 

 inches in diameter, leading from the colony below to the tops of the 

 cones, which are covered over ; this earth gets baked so hard by the 

 sun that it is broken through with some trouble. I have seen them 

 in India four feet high, but they are seldom more than a foot or twenty 

 inches high. The nest in a very populous city of the white ant is 

 sometimes four feet in diameter, and filled with stuff like wasps' comb 

 to look at, but made of fine earth and covered outside with some white 

 substance like mould or flour: in one part of this comb is found what 

 is called the "queen ant," which is a maggot with a red head and a 

 white body, sometimes two or even three inches long and the size of 

 a person's finger. I have often dug this out, but never perceived the 

 ants took any care of this "queen of theirs, who is so bloated as to be 

 unable to move ; small white ants, about the eighth of au inch long, 



