White ant

“ On some days not a single white ant is to be seen abroad; and on others, and during certain hours, they appear out of doors in myriads, and work with extraordinary zeal and energy in carrying bits of dried grass down into their nests. ”

“ Ants in great quantities and of many varieties of size and colour, from the lion ant, an inch long, to the small brown ant, which can insinuate itself into the most minute crevice. These seize upon whatever is eatable, and devour it in a short time. The ground seems alive with white ants, and the trees swarm with them inside and out; every thing here teems with life. ”

“ Resistance there can be none, as the plethoric, slow-going white ant is as a mouse to a cat in the encounter with his active enemy, added to which the black ant is furnished with a most venomous sting, in addition to a powerful pair of mandibles. ”

“ STRANGE STORIES OF ANTS. I. WHITE ANTS. BY HENRY DIAMOND. The white ant is a small insect, the body being of a yellowish white color, and repulsive in appearance. This tiny earth-dweller lives almost entirely on wood. When a tree is cut down, white ants immediately swarm toward the food thus unwittingly provided for them by man. ”

“ These white ants are of various kinds and sizes, but they are similar, in that they build great nests of clay which extend above the ground from one or two to twenty or more feet. These nests are known as ant hills, and in this part of the country some of them are not unlike hillocks. They are all honeycombed within and down deep into the earth, and are the homes of the various members of the community, consisting of the large, bulky, wormlike white queen, an inch or two in length, the savage, warlike soldiers, and the small, inoffensive-looking workers. ”

“ The white ant, being a vegetable feeder, devours articles of vegetable origin only, and leather, which, by tanning, is imbued with a vegetable flavour. "A man may be rich to-day and poor to-morrow, from the ravages of white ants," said a Portuguese merchant. "If he gets sick, and unable to look after his goods, his slaves neglect them, and they are soon destroyed by these insects." The reddish ant, in the west called drivers, crossed our path daily, in solid columns an inch wide, and never did the pugnacity of either man or beast exceed theirs. ”

“ These great mounds are made by the white ants, and contain their nests; but large and strong as they are, the ant-eater breaks them down and devours the ants. A queen white ant is shown at the right-hand corner with the extraordinary development in which the eggs are carried.
These great mounds are pierced in every direction with innumerable galleries, leading to and from the various cells and chambers in which the domestic economy of the white ants is principally performed, one of which, known as the royal cell, contains the king and queen, and is situated beneath all the others. ”

“ What strikes you at first about the white ant is that you never see it unless you lay its works open. His hard-sun-baked protections run up the tree stems or wherever he goes and conceals and protects his soft, white, fleshy body, and if you prise this casing open you may see him getting away as fast as his little legs will take him ”

“ It is curious enough, that, although the white ant be the most destructive of its species, it is said to be, individually, by far the weakest, and cannot move a step without the artificial protection of the galleries it constructs as it goes along ”

“ The White Ant—But of the insects of this order the most noted are the white ants or termites (which are ants only by a misnomer) . They are, unfortunately, at once ubiquitous and innumerable in every spot where the climate is not too chilly, or the soil too sandy, for them to construct their domed edifices. ”

“ Some of these ants grow to full three-quarters of an inch in length, and are capable of causing great pain. Many prevent their being destroyed, under the opinion that they feed upon white-ants: this I never could establish, though I believe they are ready enough to march off with the body of a dead white-ant, the same as they would with any other morsel of animal substance. ”

“ The ant of temperate regions bears the same relation to the tropical ant that the savage of the tropical zone bears to the civilised communities of more temperate climes. The ant of the villa garden and the red ant of the woods are but very ignorant savages compared with the termite, for while the one inhabits caves and tunnels in the ground, and the other rough huts, thatched with the spines of the fir, the white ant dwells in a palace far larger in proportion to its size than the abodes of the most powerful monarchs of the human race to that of their inhabitants. ”

“ Any one of numerous species of pseudoneoropterous insects belonging to Termes and allied genera; — called also white ant. See Illust. of White ant.
They are very abundant in tropical countries, and are noted for their destructive habits, their large nests, their remarkable social instincts, and their division of labor among the polymorphic individuals of several kinds. Besides the males and females, each nest has ordinary workers, and large-headed individuals called soldiers. ”

“ The white ant, as already mentioned, is one of the most destructive of these pests, since he will eat nearly all kinds of wood, and there are persons who say he is fond of knife-blades, needles, and similar things, and can even get away with a cannon-ball. ”

“ When the termites, or white ant, is seen in the neighbourhood of man, the antipathies of the species are rendered available. As soon as they are observed, sugar is strewed in such a direction as to lead the brown or black ants to the spot, who, it is known, will immediately attack and put the white party to the rout, much to the amusement of the negroes, who cheer on the blacks to kill the whites. I have often awoke with my body covered with ants, when I generally ran to the nearest water, and plunging into it, freed myself from them ”

“ The white ant is endowed with wings simply for the purpose of flying away from the colony peopled by its wingless companions, to pair with individuals of the same or other colonies, and thus propagate and disseminate its kind. The winged individuals are males and females, whilst the great bulk of their wingless fraternity are of no sex, and are restricted to the functions of building the nests, nursing and defending the young brood. ”

“ Of all the domestic plagues, the white ant is the most destructive,and as they do all their mischief in the dark or under cover either by mining below ground or by tunnelling their paths with clay when above ground, much watching is necessary to prevent their attacks. ”

“ I was rather fancifully describing her wings, dear, which she takes off herself when she enters the nest, having no further use for them. There are three kinds of ants in every nest: perfect males and females, and the workers. There are many different races of ants, from the great white ant of Africa—a terror to the natives, though in some respects his good friend—down to the little red-and-yellow meadow ants so common among us. ”

“ True ants of many kinds and of interesting habits, including "the notorious and vicious red ant," flourish in great numbers. Beetles, of many species, some of brilliant colouring, some of amazing size, are as the sands of the sea for multitude. ”

“ In Mauritius, the negroes have a custom of turning the reasoning powers of the large black ant to advantage.
White ants are frequently seen passing in and out of a small hole from underneath a building, in which case their ravages could only be prevented by taking up the flooring and destroying the nest. ”

“ But one case of stinging by a scorpion occurred in our household, and no case of injury by a serpent.
I must not omit to notice a most formidable, though apparently insignificant insect, not yet mentioned—it is the white ant. This is a small, semi-transparent insect; in appearance most harmless, in reality most destructive. The habits of the white ants are peculiar. They live in houses partly under the earth, but frequently built up in hills two or three feet above it, and pierced in every direction with halls and galleries. ”

“ They destroy many noxious insects and reptiles. The severity of their attack is greatly increased by their vast numbers, and rats, mice, lizards, and even the 'Python natalensis', when in a state of surfeit from recent feeding, fall victims to their fierce onslaught. These ants never make hills like the white ant. Their nests are but a short distance beneath the soil, which has the soft appearance of the abodes of ants in England. ”

“ Some build their nests of clay in trees, and others hollow out abodes under the bark. They vary, too, in size and form. Some are half an inch long; some white, others red and black; some sting furiously. The ants inhabiting trees are those which commit depredations in houses chiefly. The most annoying of the species is the fire-ant—a little creature of a shining reddish colour. They live in the sand, where they form subterranean galleries covered by a sandy dome. They enter houses, and attack eatables of all sorts. ”

“ There is less interest in the habits of these destructive wretches than in all other of the ant tribe; they build stupendous nests, it is true, but their interior economy is less active and thrifty than that of many other species of ants, among which there is a greater appearance of the display of reasoning powers than in most animals of a superior class. ”

“ The strange peculiarity of the omnivorous ravages of the white ants is that they shrink from the light, in all their expeditions for providing food they construct a covered pathway of moistened clay, and their galleries above ground extend to an incredible distance from the central nest. No timber, except ebony and ironwood, which are too hard, and those which are strongly impregnated with camphor or aromatic oils, which they dislike, presents any obstacle to their ingress. ”

“ Every shrub, plant, and tree, and almost every blade and leaf of grass, is covered with insect life. Ants are the most common, and meet the eye everywhere. It is impossible to go far without coming across tumuli of hard mud four feet high; and huge coffee-coloured excrescences standing out upon the trunks of trees indicate where copim or white ants have taken up their abode. ”

“ White ants (so called) are universal in their season, destructive of books and furniture and house posts in one stage of their progress, vastly annoying in another stage when they fly in myriads and deposit clouds of wings and masses of pulpy bodies. ”

“ It is not that one has any peculiar objection to white ants. They are certainly repulsive-looking insects, with their flabby white bodies and their big yellow heads, but that is of little consequence; and if they would but content themselves with walking about the tents and climbing over everything, as do other ants, together with spiders of every size, and a few beetles, one would not wish to interfere with their pleasures. ”

“ White ants have many enemies, especially among the larger ants, which carry on regular wars against them; for although ants and termites—commonly called white ants—have many points in common, yet they belong to totally different orders of insects, as can be easily noticed in their structure and development. ”

“ In [Pg 74] its native forests the creature feeds almost entirely on white ants, tearing open their nests with its powerful claws, and thrusting in its long and slender tongue, which, being probably mistaken for a worm, is immediately seized by scores of the inhabitants, who thus become an easy prey. The Indians, who also eat white ants, catch them in a somewhat similar manner, by pushing into the nest a grass-stalk, which the insects seize and hold on to most tenaciously. ”

“ It is probable, however, that they first send out scouts to discover food for the family, for the traces of white ants are discovered by a sort of clay-covered passage, formed as they proceed on their march in almost a direct line, which often extends a great distance from their nest. ”

“ White ants eat dead roots but seldom injure living wood, and they are to some extent enemies of all other insects which prey upon cinnamon trees. They build their nests around live branches, but this does not interfere with their growth. Crows and wood pigeons devour the berries with great eagerness, but in the process of digestion the productive qualities of the seed are not injured and by this means the seed is scattered over a large extent of country. ”

“ Now, although the white ants are so annoying that hardly anything is proof against their attacks, they are a great blessing in tropical climes, their office being, in the economy of nature in these hot countries, to hasten the decomposition of the woody and decaying parts of vegetation, which, without their intervention, would render these regions uninhabitable by breeding a pestilence. ”