196 REPORT OF THE HARVARD AFRICAN EXPEDITION 
they roll into a cornucopia-like receptacle and many of which are full of the 
reddish yellow ants. 
One also cannot travel far in Liberia without noticing the varied archi- 
tectural work of the termites, or white ants, the most important tropical species 
of which are quite blind and do their work under ground. The species Macro- 
termes natalensis constructs ant hills or termitaries sometimes from six to eight 
feet high (No. 466). On account of the hard clay and cement with which they 
are constructed the hills are not easy to break into; in opening them one needs 
to be careful to avoid the bites of the thousands of soldiers which in a fearful 
commotion may immediately surround him. The queen is usually found in 
the center of the nest at the bottom, pregnant with many thousands of eggs 
and many times the size of her king and consort, who is likely to be buried 
under her abdomen. The history of the termite apparently dates back to a 
time some millions of years before man appeared on the earth. Many travellers 
in the early days of African exploration have described the depredations of 
the white ants, and Smeathman ! as early as 1781 gave an interesting account 
of the termites found in Africa and made many valuable observations which 
have been amply confirmed. Maeterlinck in his recent entertaining and inter- 
esting book on ‘‘The Life of the White Ant”’ has written of these insects from 
a different standpoint. He remarks that the white ants present a model of 
social organization and that they have a civilization which is the earliest of 
any, and which is the most curious, the most complex, the most intelligent 
and in some ways the most logical and best fitted to meet the difficulties of exist- 
ence which, until our own, had ever appeared on this globe. He discusses the 
social organization, the habits and the morality of the inhabitants of the ter- 
mitaries, and philosophizes regarding their destiny from the point of view of the 
existence of the universal soul. In fact he has drawn from his story of the white 
ant a profound and moving philosophy of human life and its ultimate develop- 
ment and goal. The white ants in Liberia do not constitute the great problem 
that they do in many other parts of the tropical world as, for example, the Far 
East, and one does not see great evidences of their destructiveness in the houses 
of the Liberian towns on the coast. Macrotermes natalensis more commonly 
constructs its nests in more or less open places where the forest has been cleared. 
In the forest region and along the trails a commoner type of termite is encount- 
ered which is perhaps Termes mordax. This species builds small mushroom-like 
dwellings out of brown or bluish clay, more or less mixed with decayed vegeta- 
tion. Some of them considerably resemble a mushroom with a cylindrical stem. 
Others, constructed in tiers, one mushroom on another, look like a miniature 
Japanese pagoda. 
At certain seasons, the perfected male and female termites take to flight, 
sometimes in great clouds, for the purpose of mating, after which the females 
get rid of their wings and the males die. One or more of the fertilized females 
or queens eventually find their way to the nest in a wingless condition, where they 
are built into a large shell and fed from time to time. The eggs are eventually 
1 Smeathman: Trans. Royal Soc. (1781). 
