Packard.] INSECTS AS ARCHITECTS. 297 
structed in the mud, or in rude tunnels beneath stones at 
the bottom of .streams and ponds, or they supported their 
arched ways on the stalks of aquatic plants. These builders 
of Devonian times, in a way unconscious to themselves, tried 
the strength of their rude building material, practised the 
art of the mason, and applied the principles of the geome¬ 
trician in their rough and ready mechanics. 
In the Coal formation we find wings of fossil insects 
closely resembling our white ants, and belonging, perhaps, 
in the same family. Now some species of these insects are 
among the most skilled architects in the insect world. We 
shall see farther on how remarkable their large roomy dwell¬ 
ings are. Others construct tunnels in decaj^ed trees. Our 
common white ant (Termes Jtavipes) is known either to 
mine the roots of grape vines, the trunks of elms, pine 
stumps, or to run secret galleries in the sills of houses, or 
to live under flat stones, with nests apparently like those of 
ants found in the same situations. Different species so far 
as we know have quite different habits. For example, the 
nests of Termes arborum are described by Smeathman as 
“ surrounding the branch of a tree at the height of seventy 
or eighty feet; and (though but rarely of so large a size) as 
big as a very great sugar cask. They are composed of small 
particles of wood and the various gums and juices of trees, 
combined with, perhaps, those of the animals, and worked 
by these little industrious creatures into a paste, and so 
moulded into innumerable little cells of very different and 
irregular forms.These nests are very compact, and 
so strongly attached to the boughs on which they are fixed 
that there is no detaching them but by cutting them in 
pieces, or sawing off the branch.” The nest communicates 
with the ground by covered ways leading to the roots of the 
trees. Again he describes some nests that resemble the 
complex nests of Termes bellicosus , but are smaller and of 
simpler construction. They are built in sandy plains, and 
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