ZOOLOGY 
37 1 
to compare the white ant to the earthworm in the creation of vegetable soil. 
Undoubtedly timber which falls to the ground is more rapidly reduced to soil by 
the thick covering of red clay with which it is coated by the termites. An 
interesting and lucid description of the termite economy will be found in the 
newly published volume on insects of the Cambridge Natural History. I need 
only remind my readers that there is a parallel resemblance between the social 
workings of the termites and that of bees and ants in that the community is 
divided into classes of breeding males and females, workers and soldiers. The 
two latter sections appear to be females with the sexual organs undeveloped. 
The mature males and females assume wings and issue forth from the nest at 
the beginning of the rainy season in immense numbers, mostly meeting with a 
well-deserved fate from such mammals 
and birds as devote themselves to the 
destruction of these insects. 1 
They are usually largely eaten by 
the natives who collect them as follows: 
They build grass sheds over the ant¬ 
hills just before the rainy season, and 
as the winged ants issue in enormous 
swarms from the small holes at the 
base of the ant-hill they fly straight up 
till they come against the grass roof, 
and fall down into pots set into the 
ground with opening mouths on a level 
with the surface. As the pots are filled 
they are covered with leaves. The ants 
are afterwards roasted, wings and all, 
dried in the sun and then pounded in a 
mortar and eaten as a kind of relish. 
If the winged ant is left to itself it soon 
jerks off the wings, of which it appar¬ 
ently only avails itself to fly for a short 
distance from the mother nest. At this 
season of the year the escaped termites 
generally ascertain where a dinner party 
is being given and fly to that house, entering it by any crevice, and making 
straight for the lighted table, where they proceed to cast off their wings into 
the soup and on all the other viands, adding one more to these many grievances, 
the total sum of which will no doubt lead me to devote the remainder of my 
existence to the extirpation of the hated class of insects. 
The Orthoptera are represented by the cockroaches, the earwigs, the mantises, 
the stick-insects, the locusts and crickets. 
I have already touched briefly on the subject of cockroaches. There are 
several native species which frequent the village dirt-heaps, or are found in the 
forest, and one or two of these exhibit a certain amount of comeliness. The 
ubiquitous cockroach of Tropical civilisation is present in all large settlements, 
but it is not a true native of the country and is never found in the wilderness. 
1 So important a factor is the termite in the economy of tropical nature that it has probably caused 
the evolution of certain special types of birds and mammals. Amongst the former may be mentioned the 
Orycteropus , or Ant-bear of South Africa and the Manis or Pangolin of Africa and India. These two types 
of mammals live almost exclusively on white ants. 
