48G 
NATURAL HISTORY OF AFRICA. 
three or four feet high, that extended a distance 
of nearly fifty English miles 5 and it is asserted, 
that when the mass became putrid, and the wind 
was at south-east, the stench was sensibly felt in 
several parts of Sneuwberg, distant fully a hun- 
dred and Mty miles. 
The locust is an article of food in some districts 
in Africa. They are dressed in different ways ; 
some pound and boil them with milk ; others only 
broil them on the coals. Mr Jackson says, that, 
when he was in Barbary in 1799, dishes of locusts 
were frequently served at the principal tables, 
and were esteemed a great delicacy. 
The ant, named by Smeathman Termes bellicO" 
suSy is, next to the locust, one of the most striking 
and formidable insects of the African continent- 
They build conical nests of loam and clay, from 
ten to twelve feet in height, which are divided 
internally into a variety of cells by thin partitions* 
These nests are often very numerous, and, when 
seen from a distance, appear like villages.* The 
cells of the king and queen ants are in the cen- 
tre ; and around these, in a determinate order, 
are series of cells for what are called labourers^ or 
* Jobson, in his History of Guinea, says that some of them 
are twenty feet high, and that he and his companions have 
often hidden themselves behind them, for the purpose of 
shooting deer and other wild animals. 
