Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 27.djvu/768

 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



earth. The brick houses of the Scotch mission-station on Lake Nyassa have all been built out of a single ants' nest, and the quarry from which the material has been derived forms a pit beside the settlement some dozen feet in depth. A supply of bricks as large again could probably still be taken from this convenient depot, and the missionaries on Lake Tanganyika and onward to Victoria Nyanza have been similarly indebted to the labors of the termites. In South Africa the Zooloos and Caffres pave all their huts with white-ant earth; and during the Boer war our troops in Praetoria, by scooping out the interior from the smaller beehive-shaped ant-heaps, and covering the top with clay, constantly used them as ovens. These ant-heaps may be said to abound over the whole interior of Africa, and there are three or four distinct varieties. The most peculiar, as well as the most ornate, is a small variety from one to two feet in height, which occurs in myriads along the shores of Lake Tanganyika. It is built in symmetrical tiers, and resembles a pile of small rounded hats, one above another, the rims depending like eaves, and sheltering the body of the hill from rain. To estimate the amount of earth per acre raised from the water-line of the subsoil by white ants would not in some districts be an impossible task, and it would be found probably that the quantity at least