WHITE ANTS. 
501 
it to the wet. In the mean time the posts will 
be perforated in every direction as full of holes as 
that timber in the bottom of ships which has been 
bored by the worms ; the fibres and knotty parts, 
which are the hardest, being left to the last. 
(( They sometimes, in carrying on this business, 
find, I will not pretend to say how, that the post 
has some weight to support ; and then, if it is a con- 
venient track to the roof, or is itself a kind of wood 
agreeable to them, they bring their mortar, and fill 
all or most of the cavities, leaving the necessary 
roads through it, and as fast as they take away the 
wood replace the vacancy with that material; which 
being worked together by them closer and more 
compactly than human strength or art could ram 
it, when the house is pulled to pieces, in order to 
examine if any of the posts are fit to be used again, 
those of the softer kinds are often found reduced 
almost to a shell, and all or a greater part trans- 
formed from wood to clay as solid and as hard as 
many kinds of free stone used for building in 
England. It is much the same when the Termites 
bellicosi get into a chest or trunk containing clothes 
and other things : if the weight above is great, or 
they are afraid of ants or other enemies, and have 
time, they carry their pipes through, and replace a 
great part with clay, running their galleries in va- 
rious directions. The tree termites, indeed, when 
they get within a box, often make a nest there, and 
being once in possession destroy it at their leisure. 
They did so in a pyramidical box which contained 
