reat rate after its prey.

PART THREE, CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

WONDERS OF INSECT LIFE.

TERMITES, OR WHITE ANTS.

The great ant-eater, dozing during the hot hours of the day within the
shady coverts of the forest, sallies forth in the cool of the evening to
search for its insect prey on the open Campos. The surface of the
ground is there, in many districts, raised into conical hillocks, some
five feet in height, and streaked by lines which differ in colour from
the surrounding earth, and lead in all directions, over decayed timber
and the roots of herbage, from one hillock to the other. These hillocks
are the habitations of those curious small pale-coloured and soft-bodied
insects called termites, or white ants. They differ very greatly from
the true ants in their mode of growth, or metamorphosis, though similar
to them in their habits.

The true ant, when emerging from the egg, is a footless grub, and
remains in the pupa, or quiescent stage, inclosed in a membrane, till
its limbs are developed. The termites at once possess the form they are
to bear through life, except that the sexual individuals, during the
latter stages of their growth, gradually acquire eyes and wings. They
belong, indeed, to two very dissimilar orders of insects. The ant-bear,
however, never troubles himself about this matter; but, scraping away
with his powerful claws, soon breaks open the citadel which the
industrious insects have formed during days of unremitting toil.

The mounds of the termites differ in composition. Some, consisting of
earth, are worked into a substance as hard as stone. The coloured lines
on the ground mark the covered ways which lead from the places where the
insects obtain their food, or the materials for their habitations. The
mounds exhibit no openings for egress or ingress. They are often formed
by several distinct species of termites, each of which keeps to its own
portion of the mounds, and uses different materials. Within the
fortress exist a vast number of chambers, with galleries connecting
them, composed sometimes of particles of earth, and at others of
vegetable matter, cemented by the saliva of the insects. As they live
on dry food, and in regions where no water is found, it is supposed that
they may possess the power of combining, by vital force, the oxygen and
hydrogen of their vegetable food, and thus form water. This
supposition, if correct, accounts for the large amount of liquid which
the