IN SECT A. 
175 
little compared to the bacchanalian achievements of the Termites 
at St. Helena, which first destroy the metallic capsules from bottles 
of champagne and Bass’s ale, and then the corks. 
They seem to possess a particular mode ot torment for others as 
well as the householder and the merchant, for the contractor finds that 
before he can complete the upper portion of a building, they attack the 
lower, disfiguring his lately-plastered fabric with blisters formed by 
pushing the lime before them in their exit from the newly-built walls. 
The shopkeeper also, who, proud of his trim and well-arranged goods, 
reaches down from its shelf a box of Hutch toys, is horrified to find 
it contains nothing more or less than a mass of dirt and dust. 
Not only do they destroy property, but also necessitate consi- 
derable loss of labour, in the constant removal of goods from place to 
place to avoid them. Upon one occasion I saw a man employed 
for days sorting iron and copper brads and tacks which had become 
indiscriminately mixed together; it appeared that they had been 
made up in small paper packets, and placed in a barrel, but the 
Termites had destroyed every atom of the paper. 
They sometimes desert certain things and places for others more 
suited to their tastes, but seldom before they have wrought utter 
destruction, and they scarcely ever quit a house, while there is any 
juice or sap left in it, or until it is reduced to a mere shell, literally a 
shell, because they will eat away the whole of the wood from the in- 
terior, leaving only the unbroken coating of paint wherever it is thick 
enough to support itself. As the demolition of a building approaches 
completion, their work manifests itself somewhat suddenly. In the 
year 1860, when His Boyal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh visited 
St. Helena, the reception room at the castle was in sufficiently good 
order for him to hold a levee, and for a Governor s ball on the same 
evening : six years afterwards it was a complete ruin ! 
Amongst other valuable property, they devoured a con- 
siderable portion of the books of the Public Library, showing a 
decided preference for theological literature, very probably because 
such works generally remain longest untouched on bookshelves. 
They enter a book by very minute holes, destroy every atom of the 
interior, without showing any sign of their presence, and then depart, 
leaving the binding and gilt or marbled edges of the leaves appa- 
rently as perfect as when new. 
The suddenness with which their operations are sometimes 
