"The large species," he says, "are not only much more destructive, but more difficult to be guarded against, than those of trees (Termites Arborum), since they make their approaches chiefly under ground, descending below the foundations of houses and stores at several feet from the surface, and rising again either in the floors, or entering at the bottoms of the posts, of which the sides of the buildings are composed, which they bore quite through, following the course of the fibres to the top, or making lateral perforations and cavities here and there as they proceed.

"While some are engaged in gutting the posts, others ascend from them, entering a rafter or some other part of the roof. If they once find the thatch, which seems to be a favourite food, they soon bring up wet clay, and build their pipes or galleries through the roof in various directions, as long as it will support them; sometimes eating the palm-tree leaves and branches of which it is composed, and, perhaps, (for variety seems very pleasing to them,) the rattan, or other running plant which is used as a cord to tie the various parts of the roof together, and that to the posts which support it: thus, with the assistance of the rats, who, during the rainy season, are apt to shelter themselves there, and to burrow through it, they very soon ruin the house, by weakening the fastenings and exposing it to the wet. In the mean time the posts will be perforated, in every direction, as full of holes as that timber in the bottoms of ships which has been bored by the worms, the fibrous and knotty parts, which are the hardest, being left to the last.

"They sometimes, in carrying on this business, find (I will not presume to say how) that the post has some weight to support; and then, if it is a convenient track to the roof, or is itself a kind of wood agreeable to them, they bring their mortar, and fill all or most of the cavities, leaving the necessary

roads through it, and as fast as they take away the wood, replace the vacancy with that material, which being worked together by them closer and more compactly than human strength or art could ram it, when the house is pulled to pieces, in order to examine if any of the posts are fit to be used again, those of the softer kinds are often found reduced almost to a shell, and all, or a greater part, transformed from wood to clay, as solid and as hard as many kinds of free-stone used for building in England. It is much the same when the Termites bellicosi get into a chest, or trunk, containing clothes or other things; if the weight above is great, or they are afraid of ants or other vermin, and have time, they carry their pipes through, and replace a great part with clay, running their galleries in various directions *."

"Not content," as the authors of the Introduction to Entomology express it, "with the dominions they have acquired, and the cities they have laid low on Terra Firma, encouraged by success, the white ants have also aimed at the sovereignty of the ocean, and once had the hardihood to attack even a British ship of the line (the Albion); and in spite of the efforts of her commander and his valiant crew, having boarded they got possession of her, and handled her so roughly, that when brought into port, being no longer fit for service, she was obliged to be broken up. She was indeed in such a condition from the attack of insects, supposed to be white ants, that had not the ship been firmly lashed together, it was thought she would have foundered in her voyage home t."

As the species, however, does not in the preceding case appear to have been correctly ascertained, it is * Phil. Trans. for 1781, p.179.

† Intr. i. 246.

not improbable that it may have been an insect (Limnoria, LEACH) of another family, one species of which, according to the same authors, "in point of rapidity of execution seems to surpass all its European brethren, and in many cases may be productive of more serious injury than any of them, since it attacks the wood-work of piers and jetties constructed in salt water, and so effectually, as to threaten the rapid destruction of those in which it has established itself. In December, 1815, I was favoured by Charles Lutwidge, Esq. of Hull, with specimens of wood from the piers at Bridlington Quay, which wofully confirm the fears entertained of their total ruin by the hosts of these pigmy assailants, that have within a few years made good a lodgment in them, and which, though not so big as a grain of rice, ply their masticating organs with such assiduity, as to have already reduced great part of the wood-work into a state resembling honey-comb. One specimen was a portion of a three-inch fir plank nailed to the North Pier about three years since, which is now crumbled away to less than an inch in thickness: in fact deducting the space occupied by the cells, which cover both surfaces as closely as possible, barely half an inch of solid wood is left; and though its progress is slower in oak, that wood is equally liable to be attacked by it. If this insect were easily introduced to new stations, it might soon prove as destructive to our jetties as the Teredo navalis to those of Holland, and induce the necessity of substituting stone for wood universally, whatever the expense; but happily it seems endowed with very limited powers of migration; for though it has spread along both the North and South Piers of Bridlington harbour, it has not yet, as Mr. Lutwidge informs me, reached the Dolphin, nor an insulated jetty within the harbour.

"The inhabitants of Bridlington may believe that this insect was left there a few years ago by an American vessel, with what foundation I know not; but that it is an imported insect, and, like the Teredo navalis, not originally an European animal, seems very probable from the fact, that I can find no description of any species of oniscus at all resembling it, prior to that of Dr. Leach, who seems first to have given it a name, and it appears highly improbable that if it had been an European species it should not long since have attracted attention and been described. No other remedy against its attacks is known, than that of keeping the wood free from salt water for three or four days, in which case it dies; but this method, it is obvious, can be rarely applicable. In order to ascertain how far pure sea-water is essential to this insect, and consequently what danger exists of its being introduced into the wood-work of our docks and piers communicating with our salt-water rivers, as at Hull, Liverpool, Bristol, Ipswich, &c., where it might be far more injurious than even on the coast, I have, since December 15th, 1815, when Mr. Lutwidge was so kind as to furnish me with a piece of oak full of insects in a living state, poured a not very strong solution of common salt over the wood every other day, so as to keep the insects constantly wet. On examining it this day (February 5th, 1816), I found them alive; and what seems to prove them in as good health as in their natural habitat, numbers have established themselves in a piece of firwood which I nailed to the oak, and have in this short interval, and in winter too, bored many cells in it*."

* Intr. i. 238.

CHAPTER VII.

LAPPING INSECTS.

*

THOSE Who have paid attention to a cat while lapping milk, may have remarked, that on darting out her tongue she bends the sides and point of it upwards, so as to form a sort of hollow scoop or spoon, sufficient to contain a considerable quantity of liquid. This is partly aided by the structure of the surface of the tongue itself, which is all over thickly studded with projecting denticulations (if we may call them so), among which the particles of the liquid must be detained. This flexible and denticulated structure of the tongue gives to this family of animals a facility of lapping, which art would in vain attempt to imitate. Quadrupeds of other fami lies, such as horses and oxen, drink not by lapping, but by sucking.

In insects again, with which we are more immediately concerned, somewhat similar varieties of structure and habits prevail. The first instance which occurs to our recollection, as forming a sort of link between eating and lapping insects, is in the ant family (Formicidæ, LEACH). "When ants," says the younger Huber, "are disposed to drink, there comes out from between their lower jaws, which are much shorter than the upper, a minute, conical, fleshy, yellowish organ, which performs the office of a tongue, being pushed out and drawn in alternately it appears to proceed from Figured in Menageries, vol. i. p. 179.

: