304 INSECT ARCHITECTURE. 



one's iloor against a fox or a thief, than to exclude 

 such insidious enemies, whose aversion to light ren- 

 ders it difficult to trace them even when they are 

 numerous. 



If we reflect on the prodigious numbers of those 

 insects, and their power and rapidity of destroying, 

 we cannot but admire the wisdom of Providence in 

 creating so indefatigable and useful an agent in 

 countries where the decay of vegetable substances is 

 rapid in proportion to the heat of the climate. We 

 have already remarked that they always prefer decay- 

 ing or dead timber ; and it is indeed a very general 

 law among insects which feed on wood to prefer what 

 is unsound : the same principle holds with respect to 

 fungi, lichens, and other parasitical plants. 



All the species of Termites are not social ; but the 

 solitary ones do not, like their congeners, distinguish 

 themselves in architecture. In other respects, their 

 habits are more similar; for they destroy almost every 

 substance, animal and vegetable. The most common 

 of the solitary species must be familiar to all our 

 readers by the name of wood-louse (Termes pulsa- 

 torium, Linn.; Atropos lignarius, Leach) — one of 

 the insects which produces the ticking, supersti- 

 tiously termed the death-watch. It is not so large as 

 the common louse, but whiter and more slender, 

 having a red mouth and yellow eyes. It lives in old 

 books, the paper on walls, collections of insects and 

 dried plants, and is extremely agile in its movements, 

 darting, by jerks, into dark corners for the purpose 

 of concealment. It docs not like to run straight for- 

 ward, without resting every half-second, as if to listen 

 or look about for its pursuer, and at such resting- 

 times it is easily taken. The ticking noise is made 

 by the insect beating against the wood with its head, 

 and it is supposed by some to be peculiar to the 

 female, and to be ceuuectcd with the laying of her 



