The White Ant. 



99 



to eat it, and extend their ravages as fast 

 as it dies; but they have no part in causing 

 its death. On the contrary, the secretive 

 powers, and consequently the health of 

 the tree, is maintained by white ants and 

 other creatures, especially soil microbes, 

 eating away the outer bark of the roots as 

 fast as it decays, and converting it into 

 plant food to be again taken up by the 

 roots. 



A community of white ants consists gen- 

 erally of a king and queen, a small army of 

 soldiers, and the great body of the com- 

 munity which are the workers. The queen 

 is so fertile that when she once begins to lay 

 her eggs she lays them at the rate of sixty 

 a minute without stopping, that is, eighty 

 thousand a day. Her body is so full of 

 eggs that she is swollen to an enormous 

 size, and the workers keep her confined 

 within the walls of her chamber, the door 

 of which is big enough for them to pass 

 through with the eggs, but far too small for 

 the queen to pass through. In this cham- 

 ber the queen is waited on carefully by a 

 body of nurses, some of which provide her 

 with food, while the others carry off the 

 eggs to the nursery as fast as they are laid. 

 The workers have not only to provide food 

 for themselves and the king and queen, but 

 also for the soldiers, which mount guard 

 and defend the community from the attacks 

 of other insects, and also for the larvae and 

 young ants before their jaws are strong 

 enough to gnaw timber for themselves; 

 but by dint of steady industry they do all 

 this, and always have a store of food laid 

 up in the granaries for feeding the young. 

 This stored food is finely divided wood and 

 bark which is most probably rendered fit 

 for the young by the chemical action of the 

 saliva of the workers in preparing it for 

 them. The queen herself is so occupied 

 with laying eggs that she can give no care 

 to her offspring, and probably has no affec- 

 tion for them; but the workers, although 



they have no young themselves, show all a 

 parent's care for the young of the commun- 

 ity. The soldiers are to some extent a 

 privileged class, as they have not to pro- 

 vide food; but they are few in proportion 

 to the workers, and so are not such a bur- 

 then to the community as the standing 

 armies of some Christian nations. They 

 are larger and have very much larger heads 

 than the workers. A white ant settlement 

 is, in fact, a real commune, in which all 

 classes work for the general good, devoting 

 the most of their labor to the care and 

 bringing up of the young. 



The world's work of the white ants is to 

 keep timber from decaying and going back 

 to the air, and to convert it into an endur- 

 ing forest mould fitted for the support of a 

 higher class of vegetation than that which 

 drew it from the air. 



This, then, is the task allotted to the 

 white ants. They seize the forest trees as 

 they die, devour them, and convert their 

 substance into plant food with which they 

 enrich the forest floor, preparing it for the 

 time when man shall come and clear the 

 forest, and raise food crops in its fertile 

 soil. All this is done in the course of the 

 daily task of providing food for the support 

 of their own community, in utter uncon- 

 sciousness of the importance of the world's 

 work they are doing. 



What a lesson of encouragement for peo- 

 ple who are discontented with the daily 

 round of common duties, and pining to 

 distinguish themselves by some great work 

 which shall benefit humanity for all future 

 ages. What lot could be more seemingly 

 humble than the white ant's ? What labors 

 less calculated to favor the support of 

 higher life types and influence the progress 

 of future ages, than the simple round of a 

 white ant's daily duty ? And yet, all un- 

 consciously, the white ants have done more 

 important world's work than the lordly 

 elephant. 



C. F. Amery. 



