a 
rat 

414 THE. INSECT WORLD. 
which the brothers Poupet, rich ship-owners, caused bales of goods 
to come from St. Domingo to Rochefort, to La Rochelle, and to other 
places in that neighbourhood which possess storehouses. The 
ravages which the termites have committed in the towns of La Sain- 
tonge are really frightful. Like Valencia, in New Grenada, these 
towns will find themselves one of these days suspended over cata- 
combs. At Tournay-Charente, the floor of a dining-room fell in, and 
the Amphytrion and his guests tumbled together into the cellar. 
There may be seen in the galleries of the Museum of Natural His- 
tory of Paris, the wooden columns which supported this room, and 
which were preserved by Audouin, who had been sent on a mission 
to report on the damages done. Audouin also selected, as an 
object of curiosity, a lady’s bridal veil, which had been entirely 
riddled with holes by the termites. 
At La Rochelle these insects took possession of the prefect’s 
house (built by the brothers Poupet), and of the Arsenal. ‘There 
they invaded oflices, apartments, court, and garden. They could 
not drive in a stake or leave a plank in the garden but it was 
attacked the next day. One fine morning the archives of the de- 
partment were found destroyed without there being the smallest 
trace of the damage to be seen on the exterior. ‘The termites had 
mined through the wood-work, pierced the cardboard, eaten up 
the parchments and the papers of the administration, but had 
always scrupulously respected the upper leaf and edges of all the 
leaves. It was by mere chance that a clerk, less superficial than 
his colleagues, one fine day raised one of the leaves which hid this 
detritus, and thus discovered the destruction of the archives. AI 
the papers of the prefecture are now shut up in boxes of zine. 
These termites do not venture, any more than their congeners, 
into the light of day. ‘These terrible miners always envelope 
themselves in obscurity, and construct on all sides covered 
galleries as they advance into a building. M. Blanchard and 
M. de Quatrefages saw in La Rochelle the galleries made by 
them. They are tubes formed of agglutinated material, which 
are stuck along the walls in the cellars and the apartments, or 
else suspended to the roof like stalactites. Certain parts of Agen 
and of Bordeaux begin also to suffer from the ravages of these 
insects. The danger appears to be imminent. 


