412 



INSECTS. 



[Chap. XII. 



the climate is not too chilly, or the soil too sandy, for 

 them to construct their domed edifices. 



These they raise from a considerable depth under 

 ground, excavating the clay with their mandibles, and 

 moistening it with tenacious saliva 1 until it assume the 

 appearance, and almost the consistency, of sandstone. 

 So delicate is the trituration to which they subject this 

 material, that the goldsmiths of Ceylon employ the 

 powdered clay of the ant hills in preference to all other 

 substances in the preparation of crucibles and moulds 

 for their finer castings ; and Knox says, " the people 

 use this finer clay to make their earthen gods of, it is so 

 pure and fine," 2 These structures the termites erect 

 with such perseverance and durability that they fre- 

 quently rise to the height of ten or twelve feet from 



1 It becomes an interesting 

 qnestion whence the termites derive 

 the large supplies of moisture with 

 which they not only temper the 

 clay for the construction of their 

 long covered-ways above ground, 

 but for keeping their passages uni- 

 formly damp and cool below the 

 surface. Yet their habits in this 

 particular are unvarying, in the 

 seasons of droughts as well as 

 after rain ; in the driest and least 

 promising positions, in situations 

 inaccessible to drainage from above, 

 and cut off by rocks and imper- 

 vious strata from springs from 

 below. Dr. Livingstone, struck 

 with this phenomenon in Southern 

 Africa, asks : " Can the white ants 

 possess the power of combining 

 the oxygen and hydrogen of their 

 vegetable food by vital force so as 

 to form water?" — Travels, p. 22. 

 And he describes at Angola, an 



insect* resembling the Aphrophora 

 spumaria ; seven or eight indi- 

 viduals of which distil several pints 

 of water every night. — P. 414. 

 It is highly probable that the ter- 

 mites are endowed with some such 

 faculty : nor is it more remarkable 

 that an insect should combine the 

 gases of its food to produce water, 

 than that a fish thould decompose 

 water in order to provide itself 

 with gas. Fourcrotx found the 

 contents of the air-bladder in a carp 

 to be pure nitrogen. — Yarrell, vol. 

 i. p. 42. And the aquatic larva of 

 the dragon-fly extracts air for its 

 respiration from the water in which 

 it is submerged. A similar mystery 

 pervades the inquiry whence plants 

 under peculiar circumstances derive 

 the water essential to vegetation. 



2 Knox's Ceylon, Parti, ch. vi. 

 p. 24. 



* A.goudotti? Bennett. 



