Homes Without Hands: Being a Description of the Habitations of Animals, Classed According to Their Principle of Construction - Page 68

It must be remembered that the nests of the Termite are not confined to the surface, but extend to a considerable distance in the earth, the subterranean galleries being proportionately large to the superimposed nest. Indeed, the greater part of the material with which the walls and galleries are built is brought from below and carried upward through the nest itself. There is no visible outlet to a Termite’s nest, because the insects construct long galleries through which they can pass without suffering inconvenience from the light of day. Both the workers and soldiers are blind; but, in spite of the absence of external visual organs, they are very sensitive to light, and avoid it in every possible way.

The food of the Termite is of a vegetable character, and consists mostly of wooden fibres. They will, however, eat through almost any thing, and the traveler in hot climates finds them among his worst troubles. They will cut to pieces the mat on which a man is lying. They will eat nearly all the wood of his strong-box, leaving a mere shell no thicker than the paper on which this account is printed. They will devour all his collection of plants, beasts, birds, and insects; and a table or any other article of furniture, if left too long in one position, will be utterly ruined by the Termites, which have a fashion of eating away all the interior, but leaving just a thin shell, which looks as if nothing were the matter.

Extirpating them is a difficult task. It is true that, if the mats, clothes, and other household goods are washed with a solution of corrosive sublimate, the Termites will not touch them; but as the articles which can be thus protected are necessarily few in number, the best method is to extirpate them. This can only be done by going to the fountain-head and cutting off the supply. It is useless to destroy the workers or soldiers, for they are replaced as fast as killed; but, if the queen be destroyed, the supply of eggs is at once stopped, the subjects lose heart, and the colony dies off.

When the adult Termites leave their homes, they often fly in such clouds that they fill the rooms, and even put out the lamps by their numbers. As soon as they touch ground they shed their wings, and then they begin to find how many enemies they have. Of the myriad hosts that pour into the evening air, not one in twenty thousand survives to found a new colony. They have foes above, below, and on every side. The bats and goatsuckers hold high festival on these evenings when the Termites are abroad, and after the insects have cast their wings they are pursued by ants, toads, spiders, and a host of other enemies.

WE will now pass to the European Termites, whose history is elaborately given by M. de Quatrefages. Rochefort, Saintes, and Tournay-Charente have for some years suffered from the ravages of the Termites, and now La Rochelle is invaded by these terrible destroyers. In all probability they were imported by some ship, taken ashore in the boxes into which they had penetrated, and thence spread into the country around. Efforts are being made toward the extirpation of these terrible insects, but nothing seems as yet to have had any great effect. How serious are the damages which they work may be seen from the following account by M. de Quatrefages, in his “Rambles of a Naturalist,” vol. ii., p. 346:

“The Prefecture and a few neighboring houses are the principal scene of the destructive ravages of the Termites, but here they have taken complete possession of the premises. In the garden, not a stake can be put into the ground, and not a plank can be left on the beds, without being attacked within twenty-four hours. The fences put round the young trees are gnawed from the bottom, while the trees themselves are gutted to the very branches.

“Within the building itself, the apartments and offices are alike invaded. I saw upon the roof of a bedroom that had been recently repaired, galleries made by the Termites which looked like stalactites, and which had begun to show themselves the very day after the workmen had left the place. In the cellars I discovered similar galleries, which were within half-way between the ceiling and the floor, or running along the walls and extending no doubt up to the very garrets; for on the principal staircase other galleries were observed between the ground floor and the second floor, passing under the plaster wherever it was sufficiently thick for the purpose, and only coming to view at different points where the stones were on the surface; for, like other species, the Termites of La Rochelle always work under cover, wherever it is possible for them to do so.

“MM. Milne-Edwards and Blanchard have seen galleries which descended without any extraneous support from the ceiling to the floor of a cellar. M. Bobe-Moreau cites several curious instances of this mode of construction. Thus, for instance, he saw isolated galleries or arcades, which were thrown horizontally forward like a tubular bridge, in order to reach a piece of paper that was wrapped round a bottle, the contents of a pot of honey, etc.

“It is generally only by incessant vigilance that we can trace the course of their devastations and prevent their ravages. At the time of M. Audoin’s visit a curious proof was accidentally obtained of the mischief which this insect silently accomplishes. One day it was discovered that the archives of the Department were almost totally destroyed, and that without the slightest external trace of any damage. The Termites had reached the boxes in which these documents were preserved by mining the wainscoting, and they had then leisurely set to work to devour these administrative records, carefully respecting the upper sheets and the margin of each leaf, so that a box which was only a mass of rubbish seemed to contain a pile of papers in perfect order.”

In the British Museum are several examples of the ravages worked by Termites, one of which is an ordinary beam that has been so completely hollowed and eaten away that nothing remains but a mere shell no thicker than the wood of a bandbox.

Besides the species which were investigated by M. de Quatrefages, there are others in the south of France, and in Sardinia and Spain. One species, Termes flavicollis, chiefly attacks and destroys the olives, while in the Landes and Gironde the oaks and firs are killed by another species, Termes lucifugus.

As the limits of this work preclude a very lengthened account of any one creature, our history of the Termites must here be concluded, although much interesting matter remains unwritten.

In the accompanying illustration are shown two nests, the two upper specimens on the right hand having been already described. They are made by the little spider called Agelena brunnea, and their history will be found on page 321.

The two lower nests are made by a species of solitary wasp, which has no popular name, but is known to entomologists as Eumenes coarctata. It is not a large insect, the females being only half an inch in length, and the male rather smaller. The general color is black, with a fine velvet-like pile on the abdomen, and relieved by lines and spots of yellow. The abdomen is small, and set on a rather short and pear-shaped footstalk, as may be seen by the illustration, which represents the insect of its natural size.

This is one of the species which are tolerably common in certain localities, but, as they are very local, may be reckoned among the rarities. Mr. F. Smith, in his “Catalogue of the British Vespidæ,” mentions that it has been taken in several parts of Hampshire, Berkshire, near Weybridge, and has been found plentifully at Sunninghill. Probably the rarity or frequency of this species, as is the case with many others, depends greatly on the eyes which look after it.

Eumenes and Agelena.

This little wasp constructs small globular cells of mud, and fastens them to the stems of various plants, the common heath being the greatest favorite, so that heath-covered commons are likely to afford specimens of the nest and its architect. Each nest contains only a single cell, and is only intended to rear a single occupant. The wasp is a very useful insect, as it provisions its nest with the larvæ of small lepidoptera, each Eumenes grub requiring a tolerably large supply of caterpillars.

As is the case with so many insects, the Eumenes is greatly subject to the attacks of parasites, which contrive to deposit their eggs in the larvæ in spite of the hard mud walls of the cell. Mr. Smith mentions that he has had from the nest of the Eumenes an ichneumon fly belonging to the genus Cryptus.

IN the following illustration are figured the nests of two insects, both of them natives of tropical America, and both belonging to the hymenopterous order. The upper insect is known to entomologists by the name of Trypoxylon aurifrons, but has at present no popular name.

This insect makes a great number of earthen cells, shaped something like those of the last-mentioned species, the cells being remarkable for the form of the entrance, which is narrowed and rounded as shown in the figure. In some cases the neck is so very narrow in proportion to the size of the cell, and the rim is so neatly turned over, that the observer is irresistibly reminded of the neck of a glass bottle. The insect makes quite a number of these nests, sometimes fastening them to branches, as shown in the illustration, but as frequently fixing them to beams of houses. It has a great fancy for the corners of verandas, and builds therein whole rows of cells, buzzing loudly the while, and attracting attention by the noise which it makes.

Trypoxylon and Pelopæus.

THE lower insect is the pretty Pelopæus fistularis, with its yellow and black banded body. Both the insects, as well as their houses, are represented of the natural size.

The cell of the Pelopæus is larger than that of the preceding insect, and occupies much more time in the construction, a week at least being devoted to the task. She sets to work very methodically, taking a long time in kneading the clay, which she rolls into little spherical pellets, and kneads for a minute or two before she leaves the ground. She then flies away with her load, and adds it to the nest, spreading the clay in a series of rings, like the courses of bricks in a circular chimney, so that the edifice soon assumes a rudely cylindrical form.

When she has nearly completed her task, she goes off in search of creatures wherewith to stock the nest, and to serve as food for the young, and selects about the most unpromising specimens that can be conceived. Like many other solitary hymenoptera, this Pelopæus stores her nest with spiders, and any one would suppose that she would choose the softest and the plumpest kinds for her young. It is found, however, that she acts precisely in the opposite manner.

In tropical America there is a large group of spiders allied to the common garden spider, but of the most extraordinary shapes and colors. They all possess a hard, shelly covering, polished and shining like that of many beetles, and glittering with bright and radiant hues—blue, crimson, green, and purple being the colors with which they are ordinarily decorated. Their forms are, however, even more remarkable than their colors. Their hard and shelly covering is not uniform and smooth, but shoots out into the most extraordinary projections, giving to the creatures a wild and fantastic grotesqueness of aspect that surpasses even the weird imaginings of Breughel, Cranach, Callot, and other masters of diablerie in art.

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