The centipede is common, especially in those houses that have thatch roofs. The African centipede is very large, and its bite is poisonous, though rarely fatal. My first experience with it was one morning, in my bedroom, when I took a bouquet of flowers off the table and held them to my face. A large centipede glided out of the flowers, and running swiftly across my hand and along my arm to the elbow, dropped to the floor. Fortunately, my sleeve was short, else I should have been bitten. But one morning that I shall not forget I put on a sock, and there was a centipede in the toe of it. Unfortunately the sock was in a state of good repair; there was no hole in the toe. I was badly bitten, for it was some time before I could get the sock off; and the sickening feeling of repulsion was worse than the bite. I afterwards acquired the habit of shaking socks and shoes and clothing before putting them on. It is well worth while; for if one is disappointed in the matter of centipedes, one may perhaps shed a scorpion or several roaches, or sometimes even a snake. There are scorpions in all parts of Africa and in some places they abound. Their bite is always bad, and that of some varieties is dangerous.
But if I were asked my opinion as to the very worst pest in Africa, I would name the roach, or cockroach, and I think that the majority of white men would agree with me. My aversion to this creature is so strong that I do not pretend to be able to give a dispassionate judgment. It is a beast of an insect. It is much larger than the familiar cockroach of this country and is often two inches long; and all its powers and qualities of disposition are proportionately developed. It multiplies with amazing rapidity. It has an odour that for real nastiness takes preëminent rank even in malodorous Africa. It has a voracious appetite, eats almost everything and seems to get fat on arsenic, which I have fed to it in large quantities; though some persons declare that it thrives on arsenic by not eating it and by detecting it even when mixed with sugar or anything else. It is found in the pantry, in clothing, in the library, in furniture, in every drawer and every corner, and a thatch roof is soon full of them. Even in bed one is not always free from them, for during sleep they often nibble one’s nails and hair. The only way to kill the cockroach is to crush it, and the result is so disgusting that one will feel that it has more than avenged its death. Once in a while in the evening all the cockroaches take to flying, as if seized with a panic or madness. And when they do this they make one forget all the other pests of Africa.
If the least bit of butter or grease should touch a suit, one may depend upon it that unless it is put in a roach-proof trunk the roach will find that spot, and in the morning a hole will be eaten through. They devour wool as a horse eats hay; but they will leave both wool and grease for the starch contained in cloth bookbindings. They show a decided preference for new books, the starch being softer in these. If, in a moment of supreme folly, one should leave a book uncovered on a table over night, he will find it in the morning with several spots upon it the size of a dime, where the starch and colour are eaten out and the bare gray threads exposed. This happened to my Memoirs of Tennyson; both volumes were badly defaced in one night. Of course one will cover with heavy paper—when he has the paper—every book in his library, or, at least, those that are not already spoiled by the time he gets round to them; but books so covered lose their identity, like friends in masquerade. Besides, books thus kept in paper in that damp atmosphere will soon be covered with mould. If one adds to this that while roaches or mould are destroying the outside of his books white ants are doing their best to get at the inside, he will see that the obstacles incident to literary pursuits in Africa are well-nigh insuperable.
I cannot dismiss the white ant with this passing notice, for it also is one of the pests of Africa; indeed, there are many who regard it as the worst of the African pests. It is characteristic of the impudent hypocrisy of this stealthy insect that it should somehow get itself called a white ant, when, as a matter of fact, it is not an ant at all, and is not white. It is a dirty-yellow termite, a soft-bodied insect, in appearance like a very small piece of impure tallow. It is commonest in Africa, but is also found in South America, India and Ceylon, and one species, it is said, is even found as far north as Bordeaux.
The admirable and interesting features of the white ant (and it has some) have nowhere been better described than in Henry Drummond’s charming chapter in Tropical Africa.
The white ant lives underground in colonies of enormous numbers. It feeds chiefly on dead wood, and its presence is the explanation of the noticeable fact that there is very little dead wood—rotting logs or fallen branches—in an African forest. It does not wait until dead branches fall, but climbs the trees in search of them. But as its body is choice food for birds and other insects, and as it is defenseless and even blind, it protects itself whenever it comes above ground by building an earthen tunnel over itself as it climbs. This yellowish brown tunnel, a half tube in form, and half an inch wide, one will see running up trees and posts everywhere in Africa. In building it they carry the earth in grains or little pellets from below the ground through the tunnel to the open end of it; then having covered the pellet thoroughly with a sticky secretion they place it firmly in its proper position and hurry away for another. The soldiers of the colony, which are very few comparatively, are armed with formidable jaws. Two or three of these guard the open end of the tunnel where the work is being done. They take no part in the work of construction. But if an enemy, usually in the form of an ant, draw near with the object of capturing a worker, the soldier in an instant will be upon him. He may pound him to death, or thrust him through, or using his mandibles like a pair of scissors may cut him in two, or hurl him from the battlement as with a catapult; these different methods representing different species. After this the workers again proceed with the building of the tunnel. These tunnels are for temporary use and are not nearly as substantial as the nests. They crumble into dust after a few weeks and are blown away by the wind or washed down by the rain.
The ant-hills and the ground below are filled with an intricate network of tunnels. Professor Drummond tells us that in the elevated plains of Central Africa these ant-hills are mounds ten or fifteen feet high and thirty or forty feet in diameter, and even then the greater part of the ant habitation is underground; and that the amount of reddish-brown earth plastered upon the trees is sufficient to give tone to the landscape. And this he says is the great agricultural process of the tropics, which in temperate zones is accomplished by the earthworm carrying the under soil to the surface, transposing the upper and the lower layers, doing thoroughly what man does rudely with the plough. In the lower plains of West Africa, the white ant is not so abundant, nor the ant-hills nearly so large as those which Professor Drummond saw. Nor is there any such need of them, for the earthworm is common enough. The more numerous ant-hills are two or three feet high and are often shaped like a series of bowls turned upside down one on top of another; but the shape varies. A good way to provide for young chickens is to send a boy to the bush to get an ant-hill, then break off several small pieces at a time and give to the chickens. It will be full of ants, and the happiness of the chickens will be ample reward: there is nothing that they like better.
And that reminds me that Schweinfurth, in The Heart of Africa, relates that he himself ate white ants in unlimited quantities. He says they are especially good with corn. And then he recommends them as best when they are “partly boiled and partly fried.” I never tried them that way.
The most painstaking study and the most elaborate description of the white ant that has ever been made is probably that of Karl Escherich, whose book, Termitenleben auf Ceylon, has recently been published. Escherich spent three months in Ceylon studying the white ant. He describes thirty-five species of termite existing in Ceylon.
In the nest (the termetarium) of many of the species of white ants there are tunnels and chambers devoted to the growing of a certain fungus—real fungus gardens. Sometimes two different species of termite inhabit the same nest, or termites and ants. They live in different galleries which intermingle but never open into each other. If by the breaking of a wall they should come together fierce battles ensue. Sometimes other insects, certain beetles, for instance, live with the termites as guests, to whom they even feed the larvæ. Their presence is probably a protection against their enemies; and they seem to have many. An army of marauding ants will sometimes invade the nest and seek to carry off the occupants.