288 INSECT ARCHITECTURE. 



and upon the experience of others, and to complete 

 it with tools which he also invents. 



The termites do not stand above a quarter of an inch 

 high, while their nests are frequently twelve feet ; and 

 Jobson mentions some which he had seen as high as 

 twenty feet ; " of compasse," he adds, " to contayne a 

 dozen men, with the heat of the sun baked into that 

 hardnesse, that we used to hide ourselves in the ragged 

 toppes of them when we took up stands to shoot at 

 deere or wild beasts."* Bishop Heber saw a num- 

 ber of these high ant-hills in India, near the principal 

 entrance of the Sooty or Moorshedabad river. " Many 

 of them," he says, " were five or six feet high, and 

 probably seven or eight feet in circumference at the 

 base, partially overgrown with grass and ivy, and 

 looking at a distance like the stumps of decayed trees. 

 I think it is Ctesias, among the Greek writers, who 

 gives an account alluded to by Lucian, in his ' Cock,' 

 of monstrous ants in India, as large as foxes. The 

 falsehood probably originated in the stupendous 

 fabrics which they rear here, and which certainly 

 might be supposed to be the work of a much larger 

 animal than their real architect."* Herodotus has 

 a similar fable of the enormous size and brilliant ap- 

 pearance of the ants of India. 



Nor is it only in constructing dwellings for them- 

 selves that the termites of Africa and of other hot 

 climates employ their masonic skill. Though, like 

 our ants and wasps, they are almost omnivorous, yet 

 wood, particularly when felled and dry, seems their 

 favourite article of food; but they have an utter 

 aversion to feeding in the light, and always eat their 

 way with all expedition into the interior. It thence 

 would seem necessary for them either to leave the bark 

 of a tree, or the outer portion of the beam or door 



* JoUson'a Gambia, in Purclias's Pilgrim, ii. p. 1570. 

 | Heiier'j Journal, vol. i. i>. 248, 



