202 



THE LAKE REGIONS OF CENTRAL AFRICA. 



the sweet red clay soils, and cool damp places, avoiding 

 heat, sand, and stone, and it acts like a clearer and 

 scavenger ; without it, indeed, some parts of the country 

 would be impassable, and it is endowed with extraor- 

 dinary powers of destruction. A hard clay-bench has 

 been drilled and pierced like a sieve by these insects in a 

 single night, and bundles of reeds placed under bedding, 

 have in a few hours been converted into a mass of mud ; 

 straps were consumed, cloths and umbrellas were re- 

 duced to rags, and the mats used for covering the ser- 

 vants' sleeping-gear were, in the shortest possible time, 

 so tattered as to be unserviceable. Man revenges him- 

 self upon the white ant, and satisfies his craving for 

 animal food, which in these regions becomes a principle 

 of action, — a passion, — by boiling the largest and fattest 

 kind, and eating it as a relish with his insipid ugali, or 

 porridge. The termite appears to be a mass of live 

 water. Even in the driest places it finds no difficulty 

 in making a clay-paste for the mud-galleries, like hol- 

 low tree-twigs, with which it disguises its approach to 

 its prey. The phenomenon has been explained by the 

 conjecture that it combines by vital force the atmo- 

 spheric oxj^gen with the hydrogen evolved by its food. 

 When arrived at the adult state, the little peoples rise 

 ready-winged, like thin curls of pipe-smoke, generally 

 about even-tide, from the ground. After a flight of a 

 few yards, the fine membranes, which apparently serve 

 to disperse the insects into colonies, drop off. In East 

 Africa there is also a semi-transparent brown ant, re- 

 sembling the termite in form, but differing in habits, 

 and even exceeding it in destructiveness. It does not, 

 like its congener, run galleries up to the point of attack. 

 Each individual works for itself in the open air, tears 

 the prey with its strong mandibles, and carries it away 

 to its hole. The cellular hills of the termites in this 



