408 THE INSECT WORLD. 
chase to them and eat them by legions. The negroes in Southern 
Africa cannot be sated with them. They gather ia as have fallen 
into the water and roast them like coffee; thus prepared, they eat 
them by handfuls, and find them delicious. The Indians smoke 
the termites’ nests, and catch those that have wings. They knead 
them up with flour, and make a sort of cake of them. Travellers, 
moreover, all agree in speaking of them as very nice food, 
comparing their flavour to that of marrow or of a sugared 
cream. Smeathman prefers them to the famous palm worm (ver 
palmiste of the colonists), a delicacy known in South America, 
which is the larva of the Calandra palmarum, a species of beetle. 
It seems, however that an abuse of fried termites brings on a 
dysentery which may prove mortal. 
All the species of termites are miners, but the greater number 
are also architects and masons. A few make their nest round a 
branch of a tree. This nest is of enormous dimensions: it is as 
large as a tun. The illustration (Fig. 382)—after a drawing in 
Smeathman’s work—shows a nest of the Termes bellicosus, com- 
posed of bits of wood firmly stuck together with gum. Above 
their subterranean galleries the greater part of termites construct 
vast edifices, which contain their magazines and nurseries. The 
Termes mordax and Termes atrox raise perfect columns, surmounted. 
by capitals which project beyond them and give them the appear- 
ance of monstrous mushrooms. ‘These columns attain a height of 
twenty inches, with a diameter of five; they are constructed with 
a black clay, which, worked up by the insects, acquires great 
hardness. The interior is hollow, or, rather, perforated with irre- 
gular cells; but the most curious edifices are those of Termes 
bellicosus. ‘These are irregularly conical mounds, flanked by a 
certain number of turrets, decreasing in height. Smeathman 
gives them a height of from ten to twelve feet; but Jobson * 
affirms that he has seen some as high as twenty feet. If men 
constructed monuments so disproportionate to their size, the great 
pyramid of Giseh, instead of being one hundred and forty-six 
métres in height, would be one thousand six hundred, and would 
be higher than the Puy-de-Déme! 
These knolls of earth are of a solidity sini will bear any trial. 
* “ History of Gambia.” 
