CHAPTER XV. 



TERMITES AT HOME. 



THE Termites are wrongly named ants, for they belong 

 to an entirely different order of the Insecta, the 

 Orthoptei'a, and are related most nearly to our Blattoe or 

 cockroaches. They are three or four times as large as 

 our common black ants, but are unfortunately far less 

 accurately known. Their polity seems to be almost more 

 developed than that of the ants, and their architectural 

 talent is also superior. They raise, in Africa at least, fine 

 buildings of from ten to twenty feet high, out of earth, 

 clay, pieces of plants, stones, etc., fastening together these 

 materials by a kind of gummy saliva. So firm does this 

 make their nests, built in the shape of a cone or of a large 

 haycock, that several men can stand on their surface, and 

 that antelopes and even buffaloes are wont to use them for 

 sentries to look over the wide plains. They do not even 

 break through under the tread of an elephant or the weight 

 of a heavily laden wagon. In Senegal their size and 

 number are often so large that at a distance they resemble 

 human dwellings, the similarly conical huts of the negro- 

 villages, and travellers are often thereby led in a wrong 

 direction. Jobson, in his " History of Gambia," says that 

 many of these heaps are twenty feet high, and that he and 

 his companions often hid behind them when out hunting. 

 At first the buildings are only small, and resemble pyramids 

 scarcely a foot high. Gradually, as the population increases, 

 new and similar hills rise up all round. The partition walls 

 are then broken through, the new dwellings are united to 

 the old, a dome is added, and a symmetrical roof is built 

 over all. This is continually repeated, until the mound 

 of twelve or twenty feet high is made. The outer covering 

 consists of a firm domed vaulted layer of clay, which is 



