ongly impregnated with camphor or aromatic oils,
which they dislike, presents any obstacle to their ingress. I have had a
case of wine filled, in the course of two days, with almost solid clay,
and only discovered the presence of the white ants by the bursting of
the corks. I have had a portmanteau in my tent so peopled with them in
the course of a single night that the contents were found worthless in
the morning. In an incredibly short time a detachment of these pests
will destroy a press full of records, reducing the paper to fragments;
and a shelf of books will be tunnelled into a gallery if it happen to be
in their line of march.

The timbers of a house when fairly attacked are eaten from within till
the beams are reduced to an absolute shell, so thin that it may be
punched through with the point of the finger: and even kyanized wood,
unless impregnated with an extra quantity of corrosive sublimate,
appears to occasion them no inconvenience. The only effectual precaution
for the protection of furniture is incessant vigilance--the constant
watching of every article, and its daily removal from place to place, in
order to baffle their assaults.

They do not appear in the hills above the elevation of 2000 feet. One
species of white ant, the _Termes Taprobanes_, was at one time believed
by Mr. Walker to be peculiar to the island, but it has recently been
found in Sumatra and Borneo, and in some parts of Hindustan.

HYMENOPTERA. _Mason Wasp_.--In Ceylon as in all other countries, the
order of hymenopterous insects arrests us less by the beauty of their
forms than the marvels of their sagacity and the achievements of their
instinct. A fossorial wasp of the family of _Sphegidoe_,[1] which is
distinguished by its metallic lustre, enters by the open windows, and
disarms irritation at its movements by admiration of the graceful
industry with which it stops up the keyholes and similar apertures with
clay in order to build in them a cell, into which it thrusts the pupa of
some other insect, within whose body it has previously introduced its
own eggs; and, enclosing the whole with moistened earth, the young
parasite, after undergoing its transformations, gnaws its way into
light, and emerges a four-winged fly.[2]

[Footnote 1: It belongs to the genus _Pelopoeus_, _P. Spinoloe_, St.
Fargeau. The _Ampulex compressa_, which drags about the larvae of
cockroaches into which it has implanted its eggs, belongs to the same
family.]