CHAPTER XXIV 
THE WHITE ANT 
The insignificant termite—throughout Africa miscalled 
an “ant” — is one of the Powers of that Continent. 
Outside the tropical area, the earth-worm the world 
over is Nature’s greatest agriculturist; for year by year 
it transposes the exhausted subsoil from below and the 
refreshed superficial crust, to the extent-—so Darwin 
tells us—of ten tons per acre. 1 But in the Tropics the 
earth-worm has no place. A sun-baked surface hard as 
adamant defies his feeble fossorial efforts. But Nature 
has provided a substitute no less efficient. What the 
earth-worm accomplishes for man in the Temperate Zones, 
that the termite performs in the Torrid. By their means, 
alternately in either case, the refreshed and fertilising 
crust is buried deep beneath an exhausted subsoil; with 
automatic regularity the two strata"change places. Thus, 
and thus only, is the sequence of plant-life (which connotes 
that of all life) maintained and assured. 
Throughout the length and breadth of Tropical Africa 
the operations of the white ant stand patent and 
conspicuous to view — they challenge attention. The 
landscape is dotted with ant-hills. They stand ubiq- 
1 On the tidal sandflats of the Northumbrian coast, Mr George Bolam 
has estimated that the sand-worms (locally known as lug-worms) shift 
yearly as much as 887 tons per acre. See his Birds of Northumberland a?id 
the Eastern Borders , p. 642. 
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