74 



J NATUBALIST'S WANDERINGS 



iiitoriur of planks tind trees j but by the speeies, tliat build largo 

 excrescences on the tree-trunks, one must ad in ire the specirtlly 

 happy way in which has boen settled the difficult cpiestion of 

 how to keep their thoroughfares clean and unoljstrueted, and 

 with the least trouble dispose of the refuse of so large a colon y. 

 It is wortli while to break down a portion of their tough walls, 

 to watch for hall" an hour the outrush of the city guards with 

 their pikelhaulm heads, who with elevated antenna* en iff" round 

 every whete. for the cause of alarm, charging about frantically, 

 nodding arid beating their spiked frontlets against the walls in 

 a most threatening way, till they think the danger past, when 

 they retire and order out hordes of builders to repair the 

 breaches, who, distinguished at once by the absence of a frontal 

 f?pike, have till then kept away from the scene. 



After a general survey of the ruins, each worker retires to 

 fetch a small squarish chip, carefully exauiiues the exact place 

 into which it is to be built, then applying to that spot the 

 tip of its abdomen, it excretes a drop of a pale glutinous sub- 

 stance, places in it tlie chip, and hammers it down by the 

 combined application of its maxillce and antennas. While the 

 building is going on a company of soldiers stalk about the walls 

 guarding the workers, every now and then tapping their heads 

 with the conscious air of a constable reminding them that his 

 presence is their safety. Thus block after block with amaiting 

 rapidity is cemented together, and the sewage of the colony is 

 piled into the txlourless homogeneous walls of their dwelling. 



I was iistonished one day in making a sweep through a 

 swarm, as I thought of bees, w^hieh was buzzing overhead, to 

 find that it was composed of flies called by the natives Fapari' 

 iotiffy a species nearly related to our common Blue-bottle, 



Above the coffee gardens the heights, up to 4000 feet, were 

 ehithed with virgin forest, full of noble giants of the woods* 

 In tbe gardens many of the finest of these trees had lieen 

 allowed to stand, where -they exhibited all the stateliness and 

 grandeur of stem and crown which can be folly appreciated 

 only when surveyed at some distance ofi'. Prominent for their 

 straight and shapely pillar-like stems stand out the Lakka 

 {Myrkiica biers)^ the liasamala (Liquidamlar aUingiana)^ and 

 the white'Steniracd Kajeput trees (Mclaleiwa lem'athndron)^ all 

 of them rising with imp(»sing ndumns, without a branch often 



