Henry Drummond

“ And yet the white ant can never procure any food until it comes above-ground. Nor will it meet the case for the insect to come to the surface under the shadow of night. Night in the tropics, so far as animal life is concerned, is as the day. It is the great feeding-time, the great fighting-time, the carnival of the carnivores, and of all beasts, birds, and insects of prey from the least to the greatest. It is clear, then, that darkness is no protection to the white ant; and yet without coming out of the ground it can not live. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The world is one vast garden, bringing forth crops of the most luxuriant and varied kind century after century, and millennium after millennium. Yet the face of Nature is nowhere furrowed by the plow, no harrow disintegrates the clods, no lime and phosphates are strewed upon its fields, no visible tillage of the soil improves the work on the great world's farm. ”

“ The fact is, for the greater portion of the year in the tropics the worm can not operate at all. The soil, baked into a brick by the burning sun, absolutely refuses a passage to this soft and delicate animal. All the members of the earth-worm tribe, it is true, are natural skewers, and, though boring is their supreme function, the substance of these skewers is not hardened iron, and the pavement of a tropical forest is quite as intractable for nine months in the year as are the frost-bound fields to the farmer's plowshare. ”

“ Scavengers of a hundred kinds remove decaying animal matter—from the carcass of the fallen elephant to the broken wing of a gnat—eating it, or carrying it out of sight, and burying it in the deodorizing earth. And these countless millions of termites perform a similar function for the vegetable world, making away with all plants and trees, all stems, twigs, and tissues, the moment the finger of decay strikes the signal. ”

“ But what has this to do with earth or with agriculture? The most important point in the work of the white ant remains to be noted. I have already said that the white ant is never seen. Why he should have such a repugnance to being looked at is at first sight a mystery, seeing that he himself is stone-blind. But his coyness is really due to the desire for self-protection, for the moment his juicy body shows itself above-ground there are a dozen enemies waiting to devour it. ”

“ Darwin, the animal which performs this most important function in nature is the earth-worm. The marvelous series of observations by which the great naturalist substantiated his conclusion are too well known for repetition. Mr. Darwin calculates that on every acre of land in England more than ten tons of dry earth are passed through the bodies of worms and brought to the surface every year: and he assures us that the whole soil of the country must pass and repass through their bodies every few years. ”

“ The apparently solid logs of which the rest of the house is built are now mere cylinders of bark, and through the thickest of them you could push your little finger. Furniture, tables, chairs, chests of drawers, everything made of wood is inevitably attacked, and in a single night a strong trunk is often riddled through and through, and turned into match-wood. ”

“ Now, as this agricultural function can never be dispensed with, it is more than probable that Nature will have there commissioned some other animal to undertake the task. And there are several other animals to whom this difficult and laborious duty might be intrusted. There is the mole, for instance, with its wonderful spade-like feet, that natural navvy who shovels the soil about so vigorously at home; but against the burned crust of the tropics even this most determined of burrowers would surely turn the edge of his nails. ”

“ But in an African forest not a fallen branch is seen. One is struck at first by a certain clean look about the great forests of the interior, a novel and unaccountable cleanness, as if the forest-bed was carefully swept and dusted daily by unseen elves. ”

“ No man was less in danger of taking a provincial view of nature than Mr. Darwin, and in discussing the earthworm he has certainly collected evidence from different parts of the globe. He refers, although sparingly, and with less than his usual wealth of authorities, to worms being found in Iceland, in Madagascar, in the United States, Brazil, New South Wales, India, and Ceylon. But his facts, with regard especially to the influence on the large scale of the worm in warm countries, are few or wholly wanting. Africa, for instance, the most tropical country in the world, is not referred to at all ”

“ When a fallen trunk lying upon the ground is the object of attack, the outer cylinder is frequently left quite intact, and it is only when one tries to drag it off to his camp-fire that he finds to his disgust that he is dealing with a mere hollow tube a few lines in thickness filled up with mud. ”

“ Not only to cover their depredations, but to dispose of the earth excavated from the underground galleries, the termites are constantly transporting the deeper and exhausted soils to the surface. Thus there is, so to speak, a constant circulation of earth in the tropics, a plowing and harrowing, not furrow by furrow and clod by clod, but pellet by pellet and grain by grain. ”

“ It is not. only one tree here and there that exhibits the work of the white ant, but in many places the whole forest is so colored with dull-red tunnels and patches as to give a distinct tone to the landscape—an effect which, at a little distance, reminds one of the abend-roth in a pine-forest among the Alps. Some regions are naturally more favorable than others to the operations of the termites, and to those who have only seen them at work in India or in the lower districts of Africa this statement may seem an exaggeration. ”

“ The flabby, tallow-like body makes this insect sufficiently repulsive, but it is for quite another reason that the white ant is the worst abused of all living vermin in warm countries. The termite lives almost exclusively upon wood; and, the moment a tree is cut or a log sawed for any economical purpose, this insect is upon its track. One may never see the insect, possibly, in the flesh, for it lives under-ground ”

“ Now, in reality there can not be crops, or successions of crops, without the most thorough agriculture; and when we look more closely into nature we discover a system of husbandry of the most surprising kind. Nature does all things unobtrusively ”

“ 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 earth-work are found embracing nearly the whole trunk for some feet. The outside of these tunnels, which are never quite straight, but wander irregularly along stem and branch, resembles in texture a coarse sand-paper; and the color, although this naturally varies with the soil, is usually a reddish-brown. The quantity of earth and mud plastered over a single tree is often enormous ”

“ For two or three months in the tropics, though intermittently, the rains lash the forests and soils with a fury such as we, fortunately, have little idea of. And though the earth-works, and especially the larger ant-hills, have marvelous resisting properties, they are not invulnerable, and must ultimately succumb to denuding agents. The tunnels, being only required for a temporary purpose, are made substantial enough only to last the occasion. ”

“ The first things, indeed, to strike the traveler in entering the interior are the mounds of the white ant, now dotting the plain in groups like a small cemetery, now rising into mounds singly or in clusters, each thirty or forty feet in diameter, and ten or fifteen in height, or again standing out against the sky like obelisks, their bare sides carved and fluted into all sorts of fantastic shapes. In India these ant-heaps seldom attain a height of more than a couple of feet, but in Central Africa they form veritable hills, and contain many tons of ”

“ The building material is conveyed by the insects up a central pipe with which all the galleries communicate, and which at the downward end connects with a series of subterranean passages leading deep into the earth. The method of building the tunnels and covered ways is as follows: At the foot of a tree the tiniest hole cautiously opens in the ground close to the bark. A small head appears with a grain of earth clasped in its jaws. Against the tree trunk this earth-gram is deposited, and the head is withdrawn. ”

“ Although the proper diet of worms is decaying vegetable matter, dragged down from the surface in the form of leaves and tissues of plants, there are many occasions on which this source of aliment fails, and the animal has then to nourish itself by swallowing quantities of earth, for the sake of the organic substances it contains. ”

“ The body increases slowly in size, and through the transparent skin the long-folded ovary may be seen, with the eggs, impelled by a peristaltic motion, passing onward for delivery to the workers who are waiting to carry them to the nurseries where they are hatched. Assiduous attention meantime is paid to the queen by other workers, who feed her diligently, with much self-denial stuffing her with morsel after morsel Fig. 9.—King
White ant. from their own jaws. A guard of honor in the shape of a few of the larger soldier-ants is also in attendance as a last and almost unnecessary precaution. ”

“ Occasionally these run along the ground, but more often mount in endless ramifications to the top of trees, meandering along every branch and twig, and here and there debouching into large covered chambers which occupy half the girth of the trunk. Millions of trees in some districts are thus fantastically plastered over with tubes, galleries, and chambers of earth, and many pounds weight of subsoil must be brought up for the mining of even a single tree. ”

“ Some of this earth is brought up from a considerable depth beneath the soil, for in order to make its subterranean burrow the animal is compelled to swallow a certain quantity of earth. It eats its way, in fact, to the surface, and there voids the material in a little heap. ”

“ One company attacks the inner bark, which is the favorite morsel, leaving the coarse outer bark untouched, or more usually replacing it with grains of earth atom by atom as they eat it away. The inner bark is gnawed off likewise as they go along, but the woody tissue beneath is allowed to remain to form a protective sheath for the second company who begin work at the center. ”

“ The lower layer of soil, exhausted with bringing forth, must be transferred to the top for change of air, and there it must lie for a long time, increasing its substance, and recruiting its strength among the invigorating elements. The upper film, restored, disintegrated, saturated with fertility and strength, must next be slowly lowered down again to where the rootlets are lying in wait for it, deep in the under soil. ”

“ Before Adam delved the garden of Eden these natural agriculturists were at work, millions and millions of them in every part of the globe, at different seasons and in different ways, tilling the world's fields. ”

“ The wall in fact forms a small moon-rampart, and as it grows higher and higher it soon becomes evident that it is going to grow from a low battlement into a long perpendicular tunnel running up the side of the tree. The workers, safely ensconced inside, are now carrying up the structure with great rapidity, disappearing in turn as soon as they have laid their stone and rushing off to bring up another. ”

“ There is no limit, in fact, to the depredation by these insects, and they will eat books, or leather, or cloth, or anything, and in many parts of Africa I believe if a man lay down to sleep with a wooden leg it would be a heap of sawdust in the morning. So much feared is this insect now, that no one in certain parts of India and Africa ever attempts to travel with such a thing as a wooden trunk. On the Tanganyika plateau I have camped on ground which was as hard as adamant, and as innocent of white ants apparently as the pavement of St. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And, in spite of the natural glue which cements the pellets of earth together, the structure, as a whole, after a little exposure, becomes extremely friable, and crumbles to pieces at a touch. When the earth-tubes crumble into dust in the summer season, the débris is scattered over the country by the wind, and in this way tends to increase and refresh the soil. ”