Wessington Springs herald. (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1891, 1888-12-21
A WONDERFUL INSECT.
Romance of tho White Ant, Which I
Blind and Yet Accompanies Marvels.

Romance of tho White Ant, Which Is
Blind and Yet Accompanies NIarvels.
from the Baltimore Americana
! One portion of Professor Drum
mond's recent book, sTropical Africa"
reads like q fairy tale. It is the won
derful romance of the white ant. 1t is
small insect, with bloated, yellow
ish-white body and somewhat large
thoraN. oblong shaped, and colored
disagreeable oily brown. The termite
lives almost exclusively upon wood,
and the moment tree is cut OF log
insect is upon its track. One may never
see the insect, possibly, in the flesh,
for it lives under ground, but its raw
ages confront one at every turn.
The white ant is blind; it has many
enemies, and can never procure food
until it comes above ground How
does it solve the difficulty? It takes
the ground out along with it. I have
seen white ants working on the top of
high tree, and yet they were under
ground. They took up some Of the
ground with them to the tree-top, just
as the Esquimaux heap up snow, build
ing it into the low tunnel-hut in which
they live; so the white ants collect
earth, only in this case not from the
surface, but from some depth under
meath the ground, into tunneled ways.
Occasionally these run along che
ground, but more often mount in end
less rami6cation to the tops of trees,
meandering along each branch and
twig, and here and there debouching
into large covered channels, which oc-
cupy half the girth of the trunk.
Millions Of trees in some districts are
thus Enthusiastically plastered over with
tubes, galleries and chambers of earth,
and many pounds weight of subsoil
must be brought up for the mining of
even single tree.
Peering over the growing wall one
soon discovers one, two, or more ter
mites of somewhat larger build, con-
siderably longer, and with very diff
ferent arrangement of the parts of the
head, and especially of the mandibles.
These important-looking individuals
saunter about the rampant in the most
leisurely way, but yet with a certain
air of business, as if, perhaps, the one
was the master of works and the other
the architect. They are posted there
as sentries, and there they stand or
promenade about at the mouth of every
tunnel, like Sister Ann, to see if any
body is coming. Sometimes somebody
does come in the shape of another ant
the real ant this time, not the de-
fenseless Neuropteron, but some valiant
and belted knight from the warlike
Formicida. Singly or in troops, this
rapacious little insect, fearless in its
chitonous coat of mail, charges down
the tree trunk, it's antenn@ waving de-
fance to the enemy and it's cruel man.
dibles thirsting for termite blood.
The worker white ant is O. poor, de-
fenceless creature, and, blind and un-
armed, would fall an immediate prey
to these well-drilled banditti, who
forage about in every tropical forest
critical moment, like Goliath from the
Philistines, the soldier termite ad-,
vances to the fight. With few sweeps
of its scythe-like jaws, it clears the
ground, and while the attacking party
d. carrying off its prey, the builders,
u1snaseious of the fray, quietly con-
tinue their work. To every hundred
workers in white-ant colony, which
numbers many thousands of individuals,
there are, perhaps, two or three fight
ing men. The division of labor here is
very wonderful, and the fact that be-
sides these 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 great ant mounds are built in q
mesh-work of tunnels, galleries, and
chambers, where the social interests of
the community are attended to. The
most spacious of these chambers,
usually far underground, is very prop
erly allocated to the head of the So
ciety, the queen. The queen termite
is very rare insect, and as there are
seldom more than one, or at most two,
to colony, and as the royal apart
ments are hidden far in the earth, few
persons have ever seen queen, end
indeed most, if they did happen to
come across it, from its singular APP
pearance, would refuse to believe that
it had any connection with white ants.
Her one duty in life is to lay eggs, and
it must be confessed she discharges her
function with complete success, for in
single day her progeny often amounts
to many thousands.
A Field for Investigators.
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