me, in the shape of another ant; the real ant this time, not the
defenseless _Neuropteron_, but some valiant and belted knight from the
warlike _Formicidae_. Singly or in troops, this rapacious little
insect, fearless in its chitinous coat of mail, charges down the tree
trunk, its antennae waving defiance to the enemy and its cruel
mandibles thirsting for termite blood. The worker white ant is a poor
defenseless creature, and blind and unarmed, would fall an immediate
prey to these well-drilled banditti, who forage about in every
tropical forest in unnumbered legion. But at the critical moment, like
Goliath from the Philistines, the soldier termite advances to the
fight. With a few sweeps of its scythe-like jaws it clears the ground,
and while the attacking party is carrying off its dead, the builders,
unconscious of the fray, quietly continue their work. To every hundred
workers in a white-ant colony, which numbers many thousands of
individuals, there are perhaps two of these fighting men. The division
of labor here is very wonderful; and the fact that besides these two
specialized forms there are in every nest two other kinds of the same
insect, the kings and queens, shows the remarkable height to which
civilization in these communities has attained.

But where is this tunnel going to, and what object have the insects in
view in ascending this lofty tree? Thirty feet from the ground, across
innumerable forks, at the end of a long branch, are a few feet of dead
wood. How the ants know it is there, how they know its sap has dried
up, and that it is now fit for the termites' food, is a mystery.
Possibly they do not know, and are only prospecting on the chance. The
fact that they sometimes make straight for the decaying limb argues in
these instances a kind of definite instinct; but on the other hand,
the fact that in most cases the whole tree, in every branch and limb,
is covered with termite tunnels, would show perhaps that they work
most commonly on speculation, while the number of abandoned tunnels,
ending on a sound branch in a _cul de sac_, proves how often they must
suffer the usual disappointments of all such adventurers. The extent
to which these insects carry on their tunneling is quite incredible,
until one has seen it in nature with his own eyes. The tunnels are
perhaps about the thickness of a small-sized gas-pipe, but there are
junctions here and there of large dimensions, and occasionally patches
of earthwo