HARMLESSNESS OF TERMITES 489 



and furniture, and they sometimes burrow into books and papers that 

 are left to stand for a long time undisturbed. 



I quote below some remarks of other writers in regard to the destruc- 

 tion of timbers by termites, but I must add that I am disposed to ques- 

 tion the rate at which these insects are said to destroy wood. My own 

 observations lead me to conclude that the idea expressed by Drummond 

 and others that a piece of furniture may be destroyed in a night is simply 

 a picturesque way of putting it. In the first place, there are certain 

 kinds of wood (in Brazil at least) that the termites do not attack at all. 

 I am unable to say just now what kinds they are, but it is a matter of 

 common information among Brazilian carpenters and cabinet-makers. 



In the second place, the method of discovery of their destructive work 

 frequently leaves an erroneous impression. In accordance with their 

 general habit of keeping away from the light, termites attack a piece of 

 wood that forms a part of a building from within. Their work does not 

 appear at the surface at all, and it may be carried on for months, or even 

 for years, without its being discovered. But some day a window-sill 

 crushes in, a door-post is shattered by a trifling blow, or a rafter gives 

 way without its ever having been suspected that they were being attacked 

 by the cupim. The suddenness of the discovery not unnaturally leads to 

 the unwarranted inference that all this work was done during the pre- 

 ceding night. 



The following quotation is taken from pages 78-83 of Dr. Henry 

 Drummond's little book called *^'Tropical Africa," was has an interesting 

 chapter on white ants (pages 77-94) : 



"The termite lives almost exclusively upon wood, and the moment a tree is 

 cut or a log sawn for any economical purpose this insect is upon its track. 

 One may never see the insect, possibly, in the flesh, for it lives underground, 

 but its ravages confront one at every turn. You build your house, perhaps, 

 and for a few months fancy you have pitched upon the one solitary site in the 

 Country where there are no white ants. But one day suddenly the door-post 

 totters and lintel and rafters come down together with a crash. You look at 

 a section of the wrecked timbers, and discover that the whole inside is eaten 

 clean away. The apparently solid logs of which the rest of the house is built 

 are now mere cylinders of bark, and through the thickest of them you could 

 push your little finger. Furniture, tables, chairs, chests of drawers, every- 

 thing made of wood, is inevitably attacked, and in a single night a strong 

 trunk is often riddled through and through and turned into matchwood. 

 There is no limit, in fact, to the depredation by these insects, and they will 

 eat books, or leather, or cloth, or anything, and in many parts of Africa, I be- 

 lieve. If a man lay down to sleep with a wooden leg it would be a heap of saw- 

 dust in the morning. So much feared is this insect now that no one in certain 

 parts of India and Africa ever attempts to travel with such a thing as a 



