200 THE TERMITES. 



states that they never cut right through the corks which 

 stop up stored bottles of wine, but leave a very thin layer 

 which is sufficient to prevent the outflow of the wine and 

 the consequent destruction of the workers. The same 

 author relates that in order to reach a box of waxlights they 

 made a covered road from the ground up to the second story 

 of a house. 



The Termites were first introduced into Europe by a ship 

 from over the seas, and have made themselves remarkable 

 as the most mischievous enemies of wood in Italy, Spain, 

 France, and the greenhouses in Schonbrunn, near Vienna. 

 In France they have settled along the banks of the Lower 

 Charente, in the towns of Rochefort and la Rochelle, and 

 also in Bordeaux and the vicinity. They were in Rochefort 

 apparently for a long time before they were discovered, 

 until the fall of an uninhabited house in the Rue Royale 

 and the simultaneous enormous dispersion of the Termites 

 in the neighboring houses, in the year 1797, drew on them 

 the eyes of the authorities, unfortunately too late. Closer 

 investigation showed that the whole costly stores of stacked 

 oak for the building of ships of war for the navy had been 

 destroyed ; all the public buildings were infected and the 

 archives of the navy could only be thenceforth protected by 

 keeping them in metal safes. In a school a whole dinner sud- 

 denly sank two stories deep into the cellar, and other buildings 

 threatened to fall. A smith, living in the neighborhood of 

 the docks, suddenly saw his anvil yield under the strokes of 

 his hammer. The wooden block which carried it splintered 

 in pieces, and revealed itself as the dwelling of the Termites. 

 In the year 1820 the ship of war, le Genots, built under 

 Napoleon, had to be broken up, being rendered quite useless 

 by the Termites. The same fate befell an English ship of 

 the line, the " Albion," into which the Termites had pene- 

 trated. 



The Termites apparently came to Schonbrunn in plants 

 from Brazil. They so thoroughly destroyed both the 

 wooden tubs and the beams that in the year 1839 one of the 

 largest greenhouses had to be pulled down. They multiplied 

 rapidly within the greenhouses, at a temperature of 24 R. 

 [30 C., or86 v F. TR], but are now nearly exterminated. 

 The European Termites belong almost exclusively to the 

 already mentioned Termes lucifugus (light avoiding Ter- 



