412 INSECTS. [CHar. XII. 
the climate is not too chilly, or the soil too sandy, for 
them to construct their domed edifices. 
These they raise from a considerable depth under 
ground, excavating the clay with their mandibles, and 
moistening it with tenacious saliva! until it assume the 
appearance, and almost the consistency, of sandstone. 
So delicate is the trituration to which they subject this 
material, that the goldsmiths of Ceylon employ the 
powdered clay of the ant hills in preference to all other 
substances in the preparation of crucibles and moulds 
for their finer castings; and Knox says, “the people 
use this finer clay to make their earthen gods of, it is so 
pure and fine.”? These structures the termites erect 
with such perseverance and durability that they fre- 
quently rise to the height of ten or twelve feet from 
1 It becomes an _ interesting 
question whence the termites derive 
the large supplies of moisture with 
which they not only temper the 
clay for the construction of their 
long covered-ways above ground, 
but for keeping their passages uni- 
formly damp and cool below the 
surface, Yet their habits in this 
particular are unvarying, in the 
seasons of droughts as well as 
after rain; in the driest and least 
promising positions, in situations 
inaccessible to drainage from above, 
and cut off by rocks and imper- 
vious strata from springs from 
below. Dr, Livingstone, struck 
with this phenomenon in Southern 
Africa, asks: ‘Can the white ants 
possess the power of combining 
the oxygen and hydrogen of their 
vegetable food by vital force so as 
to form water?” — Travels, p. 22. 
And he describes at Angola, an 
insect* resembling the Aphrophora 
spumaria; seven or eight indi- 
viduals of which distil several pints 
of water every night.—P. 414. 
It is highly probable that the ter- 
mites are endowed with some such 
faculty : nor is it more remarkable 
that an insect should combine the 
gases of its food to produce water, 
than that a fish thould decompose 
water in order to provide itself 
with gas. Fourcrorx found the 
contents of the air-bladder in a carp 
to be pure nitrogen, — Yarreil, vol. 
i, p. 42. And the aquatic larva of 
the dragon-fly extracts air for its 
respiration from the water in which 
itissubmerged, A similar mystery 
pervades the inquiry whence plants 
under peculiar circumstances derive 
the water essential to vegetation. 
2 Knox’s Ceylon, Parti. ch. vi. 
p. 24, 
* A, goudotti? Bennett. 
