. Popular science monthly. or the moment his juicy body shows itselfabove-ground there are a dozen enemies waiting to devour it. Andyet 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 sur-face under the shadow of night. Night in the tropics, so far as ani-mal life is concerned, is as the day. It is the great feeding-time, thegreat 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


. Popular science monthly. or the moment his juicy body shows itselfabove-ground there are a dozen enemies waiting to devour it. Andyet 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 sur-face under the shadow of night. Night in the tropics, so far as ani-mal life is concerned, is as the day. It is the great feeding-time, thegreat 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 withoutcoming out of the ground it can not live. How does it solve the diffi-culty ? It takes the ground out along with it. I have seen white antsworking on the top of a high tree, and yet they were took up some of the ground with them to the tree-top ; just asthe Esquimaux heap up snow, building it into the low tunnel huts inwhich they live, so the white ants collect earth, only in this case not. ALL SORTS OF FANTASTIC SHAPES. from the surface but from some depth underneath the ground, andplaster it into tunneled ways. Occasionally these run along theground, but more often mount in endless ramifications to the top oftrees, meandering along every branch and twig, and here and theredebouching into large covered chambers which occupy half the girthof the trunk. Millions of trees in some districts are thus fantasticallyplastered over with tubes, galleries, and chambers of earth, and many 742 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. pounds weight of subsoil must be brought up for the mining of evena single tree. The building material is conveyed by the insects up acentral pipe with which all the galleries communicate, and which atthe downward end connects with a series of subterranean passagesleading deep into the earth. The method of building the tunnels andcovered ways is as follows : At the foot of a tree the tiniest hole cau-tiously opens in the ground close to t


Size: 2013px × 1242px
Photo credit: © Reading Room 2020 / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No

Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1870, booksubjectscience, bookyear1872