1st. Formica fuliginosa, or black carpenter ant, which selects hard and tough woods.
2nd. Formica fusca, or dusky ant, which prefers soft woods.
3rd. Formica flava, or yellow ant, which also prefers soft woods.
The carpenter bee prefers particular kinds of wood. In India it is very fond of cadukai (Tamil) wood, which is often used for railway sleepers. Round the holes it makes there is a black tinge, arising, probably, from the iron in its saliva acting on the gallic acid of the timber. Providing it meets with the wood it prefers, it is not very particular whether it is standing timber, or the beams of a residence.
The termite, or white ant, is a terrible destroyer of wood in nearly all tropical countries. There are many species of termite, and all are fearfully destructive, being indeed the greatest pest of the country wherein they reside. Nothing, unless cased in metal, can resist their jaws; and they have been known to destroy the whole woodwork of a house in a single season. They always work in darkness, and, at all expenditure of labour, keep themselves under cover, so that their destructive labours are often completed before the least intimation has been given. For example, the termites will bore through the boards of a floor, drive their tunnels up the legs of the tables or chairs, and consume everything but a mere shell no thicker than paper, and yet leave everything apparently in a perfect condition. Many a person has only learned the real state of his furniture by finding a chair crumble into dust as he sat upon it, or a whole staircase fall to pieces as soon as a foot was set upon it. In some cases the termite lines its galleries with clay, which soon becomes as hard as stone, and thereby produces very remarkable architectural changes. For example, it has been found that a row of wooden columns in front of a house have been converted into a substance as hard as stone by these insects. In pulling down the old cathedral at Jamaica, some of the timbers of the roof, which were of hard wood, were eaten away, and a cartload of nests formed by the ants was removed, after being cut away by great labour with hatchets.
The first indication of a house being attacked by ants in the tropics is, perhaps, the yielding of a floor board in the middle of a room, or the top hinge of a door suddenly leaving the frame to which it had been firmly screwed a short time before.
That the ants provide for winter—as not only Dr. Bancroft and many others, even King Solomon, reports—is found to be an error. Where there is an ordinary winter, the ants lie dormant, during which torpid state they do not want food.
The greater number of species belong to the tropical regions, where they are useful in destroying the fallen trees that are so plentiful in those latitudes, and which, unless speedily removed, might be injurious to the young saplings by which they are replaced. Two species, however, are known in Europe, namely, Termes lucifugus and Termes rucifollis, and have fully carried out their destructive character, the former species devouring oaks and firs, and the latter preferring olives and similar trees. At La Rochelle these insects have multiplied so greatly as to demand the public attention.
M. de Quatrefages, who visited one of the spots in which these destructive insects had settled themselves, gives the following account of their devastating energy: “The prefecture and a few neighbouring houses are the principal scene of the destructive ravages of the termites, but here they have taken complete possession of the premises. In the garden not a stake can be put into the ground, and not a plank can be left on the beds, without being attacked within twenty-four or forty-eight hours. The fences put round the young trees are gnawed from the bottom, while the trees themselves are gutted to the very branches.