242 INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 



can species, called by Smeathman Termes bellicosus, is 

 the most formidable. These insects live in large clay 

 nests, from whence they excavate tunnels all round, 

 often to the extent of several hundred feet ; from these 

 hey will descend a considerable depth below the foun- 

 dation of a house, and rise again through the floors ; or, 

 boring through the posts and supports of the building, 

 enter the roof, and construct there their galleries in va- 

 rious directions. If a post be a convenient path to the 

 roof* or has any weight to support, which how they dis- 

 cover is not easily conjectured, they will fill it with their 

 mortar, leaving only a trackway for themselves; and 

 thus, as it were, convert it from wood into stone as 

 hard as many kinds of free-stone. In this manner they 

 soon destroy houses, and sometimes even whole villages 

 when deserted by their inhabitants, so that in two or 

 three years not a vestige of them will remain. 



These insidious insects are not less expeditious in de- 

 stroying the wainscoting, shelves, and other fixtures of 

 a house than the house itself. With the most consum- 

 mate art and skill they eat away all the inside of what 

 they attack, except a few fibres here and there which 

 exactly suffice to keep the two sides, or top and bottom, 

 connected, so as to retain the appearance of solidity after 

 the reality is gone; and all the while they carefully avoid 

 perforating the surface, unless a book or any other thing 

 that tempts them should be standing upon it. Ksemp- 

 fer, speaking of the white ants of Japan, gives a remark- 

 able instance of the rapidity with which these miners 

 proceed. Upon rising one morning he observed that 

 one of their galleries of the thickness of his little finger 

 had been formed across his table; and, upon a further 



