504 WHITE ANTS. 



nature, by burying vegetable matter as quickly beneath 

 the soil, as the ferocious red ant does dead animal sub- 

 stances. The white ants keep generally out of sight, and 

 work under galleries constructed by night, to screen 

 them from the observation of birds. At some given signal, 

 however, I never could ascertain what, they rush out by 

 hundreds, and the sound of their mandibles cutting grass 

 into lengths, may be heard like a gentle wind murmuring 

 through the leaves of the trees. They drag these pieces 

 to the doors of their abodes, and after some hours' toil 

 leave off work, and many of the bits of grass may be 

 seen collected around the orifice. They continue out of 

 sight for perhaps a month, but they are never idle. On 

 one occasion, a good bundle of grass was laid down for my 

 bed, on a spot which was quite smooth and destitute of 

 plants. The ants at once sounded a call to a good supply 

 of grass. I heard them incessantly nibbling and carrying 

 away all that night ; and they continued all next day 

 (Sunday) and all that night too with unabated energy. 

 They had thus been thirty-six hours at it, and seemed as 

 fresh as ever. In some situations, if we remained a day, 

 they devoured the grass beneath my mat, and would have 

 eaten that too, had we not lain down more grass. At 

 some of their operations, they beat time in a curious 

 manner. Hundreds of them are engaged in building a 

 large tube, and they wish to beat it smooth. At a signal, 

 they all give three or four energetic beats on the plaster 

 in unison. It produces a sound like the dropping of rain 

 off a bush when touched. These insects are the chief 

 agents employed in forming a fertile soil. But for their 

 labours, the tropical forests, bad as they are now with 

 fallen trees, would be a thousand times worse. They 

 would be impassable on account of the heaps of dead 

 vegetation lying on the surface, and emitting worse 

 effluvia than the comparatively small unburied collections 

 do now. When one looks at the wonderful adaptations 

 throughout creation, and the varied operations carried on 

 with such wisdom and skill, the idea of second causes 

 looks clumsy. We are viewing the direct handiworks of 

 Him who is the one and only Power in the universe ; 

 wonderful in counsel ; in whom we all live and move and 

 have our being. 



The Batoka of these parts are very degraded in their 

 appearance, and are not likely to improve, either physically 



