gravis_, Walker;
_M. dirus_, Walker; _M. barbarus_, Walker.]

_The White Ant_.--But of the insects of this order the most noted are
the _white ants_ or termites (which are ants only by a misnomer). They
are, unfortunately, at once ubiquitous and innumerable in every spot
where the climate is not too chilly, or the soil too sandy, for them to
construct their domed edifices.

These they raise from a considerable depth under ground, excavating the
clay with their mandibles, and moistening it with tenacious saliva[1]
until it assume the appearance, and almost the consistency, of
sandstone. So delicate is the trituration to which they subject this
material, that the goldsmiths of Ceylon employ the powdered clay of the
ant hills in preference to all other substances in the preparation of
crucibles and moulds for their finer castings: and KNOX says, "the
people use this finer clay to make their earthen gods of, it is so pure
and fine."[2] These structures the termites erect with such perseverance
and durability that they frequently rise to the height of ten or twelve
feet from the ground, with a corresponding diameter. They are so firm in
their texture that the weight of a horse makes no apparent indentation
on their solidity; and even the intense rains of the monsoon, which no
cement or mortar can long resist, fail to penetrate the surface or
substance of an ant hill.[3] In their earlier stages the termites
proceed with such energetic rapidity, that I have seen a pinnacle of
moist clay, six inches in height and twice as large in diameter,
constructed underneath a table between sitting down to dinner and the
removal of the cloth.

[Footnote 1: It becomes an interesting question whence the termites
derive the large supplies of moisture with which they not only temper
the clay for the construction of their long covered ways above ground,
but for keeping their passages uniformly damp and cool below the
surface. Yet their habits in this particular are unvarying, in the
seasons of droughts as well as after rain; in the driest and least
promising positions, in situations inaccessible to drainage from above,
and cut off by rocks and impervious strata from springs from below. Dr.
Livingstone, struck with this phenomenon in Southern Africa, asks: "Can
the white ants possess the power of combining the oxygen and hydrogen of
their vegetable food by vital force so as to form water?"--_Travels_, p.
22. And he describes at Angola, an ins