TREE ANTS NEST. 



which they are attached. This species has the external hahit, 

 size, and almost the colour, of the Termcs atrox. 



52. There are some nests that resemble the hill-nests first 

 described, built in those sandy plains called Savannahs. They 

 are composed of black mud, raised from a few inches below the 

 white sand, and are built in the form of an imperfect or bell- 

 shaped cone, having their tops rounded. These are generally 

 about four or five feet high. They seem to be inhabited by 

 insects nearly as large as the Termes hellicosiis, and diflfering very 

 little from that species, except in colour, which is brighter. 



53. The societies of Termes htcifugus, discovered by Latreille 

 at Bourdeaux, are very numerous ; but instead of making arti- 

 ficial nests, they make their lodgments in the trunks of pines 

 and oaks, where the branches diverge from the tree. They 

 eat the wood the nearest the bark without attacking the interior, 

 and bore a vast number of holes and irregular galleries. That 

 part of the wood appears moist, and is covered with little gelatinous 

 paiticles, not unKke gum-arabic. These insects seem to be fur- 

 nished with an acid of a very penetrating odour, which, perhaps, 

 is useful to them in softening the wood. The soldiers in those 

 societies are as about one to twenty-five of the labourers. 



The anonymous author of the Observations on the Termites of 

 Ceylon, seems to have discovered a sentry-box in his nests. "I 

 found," says he, " in a very small cell in the middle of the solid 

 mass, (a cell about half an inch in height, and very narrow,) a 

 larva with an enormous head. Two of these individuals were in 

 the same cell ; one of the two seemed placed as sentinel at , the 

 entrance of the cell. I amused myself by forcing the door two or 

 three times ; the sentinel immediately appeared, and only 

 retreated when the door was on the point to be stopped up, 

 which was done in three minutes by the labourers." 



54. Having thus given some idea of their habitations, we shall 

 now direct our observations to the insects themselves, their 

 manner of building, fighting, and marching,, and to a more 

 particular account of the vast mischief they cause to mankind. 



It is a common character of the different species which have 

 been noticed, that the workers and the soldiers never expose 

 themselves in the open air, but invariably travel either under 

 ground, or along the holes which they bore in trees and other 

 substances. When in certain exceptional cases in quest of 

 plunder they are compelled to move above ground, they make a 

 vault with a coping of earth, or a tube, formed, of that material 

 with which they build their nests, along which they travel com- 

 pletely protected. The Termes hellicosus uses for this purpose 

 the red, and the turret-builders black clay ; whilst the Termes 



117 



