FUNGUS ANT.
The study of their various buildings alone, from the little we know of them, would occupy a zealous entomologist for years. Here we have an American species that forms its globular nest of the size of a large Dutch cheese, of small twigs artistically interlaced; there another, which (Formica bispinosa) uses cotton for its building material, and through the chemical agency of its pungent secretion converts it into a spongy substance.
On the west coast of Borneo, Mr. Adams noticed two kinds of ants’ nests—one species of the size of a man’s hand, adhering to the trunk of trees resembling, when cut through, a section of the lungs; the other was composed of small withered bits of sticks and leaves, heaped up in the axils of branches, somewhat in the form of flattened cylinders and compressed cones. A third species, still more ingenious, constructs its domicile out of a large leaf, bending the two halves by the weight of united millions till the opposite margins meet at the under surface of the mid-rib, where they are secured by a gummy matter. The stores and larvæ are conveyed into the nest so made by regular beaten tracks along the trunk and branches of the tree.
On the large plains near Lake Dilolo, where water stands so long annually as to allow the lotus and other aqueous plants to come to maturity, Dr. Livingstone had occasion to admire the wonderful sagacity of the ants, whom he declares to be wiser than some men, as they learn by experience. When all the land is submerged a foot deep, they manage to exist by ascending to little houses, built of black tenacious loam, on stalks of grass, and placed higher than the line of inundation. This must have been the result of experience, for if they had waited till the water actually invaded their habitations on the ground, they would not have been able to procure materials for their higher quarters, unless they dived down to the bottom for every mouthful of clay. They must have been built in anticipation, ‘and if so,’ says the celebrated traveller, ‘let us humbly hope that the sufferers by the late inundations in France may be possessed of as much common sense as the little black ants of the Dilolo plains.’
Unable or unwilling to work themselves, some species of ants make war upon others for the sole purpose of procuring bondsmen, who literally and truly labour for them, and perform all the domestic duties of the community; but the Mexican honey ants (Myrmecocystus Mexicanus) are, if possible, still more remarkable, for here we see an animal rearing others of the same species for the purpose of food. Some of these ants, namely, are distinguished by an enormous swelling of the abdomen, which is converted into a mass like honey, and being unable, in their unwieldly condition, to seek food themselves, are fed by the labourers, until they are doomed to die for the benefit of the community. Whether this vast distension is the result of an intestinal rupture, caused by an excessive indulgence of the appetite, or whether they are purposely selected, confined, and over-fed, or wounded for the purpose, has not yet been ascertained.
The termites, or white ants, as they are commonly called, though they in reality belong to a totally different order of insects, are spread in countless numbers over all the warmer regions of the earth, emulating on the dry land the bore-worm in the sea; for when they have once penetrated into a building, no timber except ebony and iron-wood, which are too hard, or such as is strongly impregnated with camphor and aromatic oils, which they dislike, is capable of resisting their attacks. Their favourite food is wood, and so great are their multitudes, so admirable their tools, that in a few days they devour the timberwork of a spacious apartment. Outwardly, the beams and rafters may seem untouched, while their core is completely consumed, for these destructive miners work in the dark, and seldom attack the outside until they have previously concealed themselves and their operations by a coat of clay. Scarcely any organic substance remains free from their attacks; and forcing their resistless way into trunks, chests, and wardrobes, they will often devour in one night all the shoes, boots, clothes, and papers they may contain. It is principally owing to their destructions, says Humboldt, that it is so rare to find papers in tropical America of an older date than fifty or sixty years. Smeathman relates, that a party of them once took a fancy to a pipe of fine old Madeira, not for the sake of the wine, almost the whole of which they let out, but of the staves, which, however, may not have proved less tasteful from having imbibed some of the costly liquor. On surveying a room which had been locked up during an absence of a few weeks, Forbes, the author of the ‘Oriental Memoirs,’ observed a number of advanced works in various directions towards some prints and drawings in English frames; the glasses appeared to be uncommonly dull, and the frames covered with dust. On attempting to wipe it off, he was astonished to find the glasses fixed to the wall, not suspended in frames as he left them, but completely surrounded by an incrustation cemented by the white ants, who had actually eaten up the deal frames and backboards and the greater part of the paper, and left the glasses upheld by the incrustation or covered way which they had formed during their depredations.
On the small island of Goree, near Cape Verde, the French naturalist, Adanson, lived in a straw hut, which, though quite new at the time he took up his residence in it, became transparent in many places before the month was out. This might have been endured, but the villanous termites ravaged his trunk, destroyed his books, penetrated into his bed, and at last attacked the naturalist himself. Neither sweet nor salt water, neither vinegar nor corrosive liquids, were able to drive them away, and so Adanson thought it best to abandon the premises, and to look out for another lodging.
The ravages of the termites are, however, perhaps more than compensated by their services in removing decayed vegetable substances from the face of the earth, and thus contributing to the purity of the air and the beauty of the landscape. If the forests of the tropical world, where thousands of gigantic trees succumb to the slow ravages of time, or are suddenly prostrated by the hurricane, still appear in all the verdure of perpetual youth, it is chiefly to the unremitting labours of the termites that they are indebted for their freshness.
Though belonging to a different order of the insect world, the economy of the termites is very similar to that of the real ants. They also form communities, divided into distinct orders; labourers (larvæ), soldiers (neuters), perfect insects—and they also erect buildings, but of a far more astonishing structure. Several of their species (T. atrox, bellicosus Smeathman) erect high dome-like edifices, rising from the plain, so that at first sight they might be mistaken for the hamlets of the negroes; others (T. destructor arborum) build on trees, often at a considerable height above the ground. These sylvan abodes are frequently the size of a hogshead, and are more generally found in the New World.
