74 A NATURALIST'S WANDERINGS 



interior of planks and trees ; but by the species, that build large 

 excrescences on the tree-trunks, one must admire the specially 

 happy way in which has been settled the difiScult question of 

 how to keep their thoroughfares clean and unobstructed, and 

 with the least trouble dispose of the refuse of so large a colony. 

 It is worth while to break down a portion of their tough walls, 

 to watch for half an hour the butrush of the city guards with 

 their pihelhaube heads, who with elevated antennae sniif round 

 everywhere for the cause of alarm, charging about frantically, 

 nodding and beating their spiked frontlets against the walls in 

 a most threatening way, till they think the danger past, when 

 they retire and order out hordes of builders to repair the 

 breaches, who, distinguished at once by the absence of a frontal 

 spike, have till then kept away from the scene. _ 



After a general survey of the ruins, each worker retires to 

 fetch a small squarish chip, carefully examines the exact place 

 into which it is to be built, then applying to that spot the 

 tip of its abdomen, it excretes a drop of a pale glutinous sub- 

 stance, places in it the chip, and hammers it down by the 

 combined application of its maxillae and antennae. While the 

 building is going on a company of soldiers stalk about the walls 

 guarding the workers, every now and then tapping their heads 

 with the conscious air of a constable reminding them that his 

 presence is their safety. Thus block after block with amazing 

 rapidity is cemented together, and the sewage of the colony is 

 piled into the odourless homogeneous walls of their dwelling. 



I was astonished one day in making a sweep through a 

 swarm, as I thought of bees, which was buzzing overhead, to 

 find that it was composed of flies called by the natives Papan- 

 tong, a species nearly related to our common Blue-bottle. 



Above the coffee gardens the heights, up to 4000 feet, were 

 clothed with virgin forest, full of noble giants of the woods. 

 In the gardens many of the finest of these trees had been 

 allowed to stand, where they exhibited all the stateliness and 

 grandeur of stem and crown which can be fully appreciated 

 only when surveyed at some distance off. Prominent for their 

 straight and shapely pillar-like stems stand out the Lakka 

 {Myristica iners), the Kasamala (Liquidamhar altingiana), and 

 J the white-stemmed Kajeput trees {Melaleuca leucadendron), all 

 of them rising with imposing columns, without a branch often 



