174 
ST. HELENA. 
bringing down the building with it* Their manner of attack is 
generally, in the first instance, through the ground'; they ascend the 
interior of walls, mortar, lime or even a soft building stone 
forming no barrier, and enter any woodwork that is in contact with 
them ; sometimes they travel up the outer surface of a wall or iron 
column under cover of their tunnels, which are about one-eighth of 
an inch in diameter ; it is probable that they employ this plan when 
their object is to reach some article, which they could not 
attain from the inside of a wall ; by means of these tunnels they 
have been known to get into a valuable ship’s cargo, which, stored 
upon iron floors and not nearer to any wall than eight or ten inches, 
was thought to be safe from them ; they simply crossed over the 
spaces between the walls and the bales of goods by carrying their 
tunnels suspended horizontally from point to point like tubular 
bridges. 
Nothing escapes their marvellously instinctive powers ; furniture, 
clothing, paper, merchandize, all share alike, and, with a few hours’ 
quiet, they will make themselves just as much at home inside of a 
sack of rice or sugar as anywhere else ; their partiality for the sta- 
tionery m the Engineer office was remarkable, and, after various un- 
successful attempts to secure it from them, I felt certain an iron chest 
would preserve it ; but not so, they ate the putty from the seams of 
the chest, and gained an entrance. There are few things that they 
will not get through by some means or another, if there is any- 
thing to be got on the other side that suits them ; the ingenious 
manner by which they gain access to preserved meats, sardines, 
and vegetables, shows that they will even make their way through 
metallic substances. They deposit on the iron or tin case, some- 
where out of sight, a mass of wet, muddy looking stuff, which 
soon corrodes it sufficiently for them to penetrate to the inside ; 
probably there is something in the chemical composition of this 
stuff that hastens decomposition of the metal. Smeathman relates 
that a party of Termites once took a fancy to a pipe of fine old 
Madeira, not for the sake of the wine, almost the whole of which they 
let out, but of the staves, which, however, may not have proved less 
tasteful from having imbibed some of the costly liquor ;f but this is 
# A specimen of one of the beams removed from a public office durin" 
of Jamestown may now be seen in the British Museum. 
t Ihe Iropical World, by Or. G. Martwig. 
the reconstruction 
