This species very often, instead of selecting the bough of a tree, builds in the roof or wall of a house, and unless observed in time, and expelled, occasions considerable damage. It is easier, in fact, to shut one's door against a fox or a thief, than to exclude such insidious enemies, whose aversion to light renders it difficult to trace them even when they are numerous. [There are also termites in Europe, and the city of La Rochelle has suffered terribly from them. They eat the trees in the gardens, and not a stake can be driven into the ground, or even a plank left for twenty-four hours, without being attacked. They also enter the houses and utterly ruin them by eating every bit of timber that is used in them. In one instance, where a room had been repaired, the stalactitic galleries of the termites showed themselves the very day after the workmen had left the room. They invaded the prefecture, and did exceeding damage, one of their feats of voracity being so extraordinary as to deserve mention. The archives of the department were left in boxes, and privately inspected. One day, when a paper was needed, the whole of the documents fell to pieces, and were metamorphosed as if by magic into a heap of clay. The termites had got into the boxes by boring through the wainscot of the room, and had then penetrated among the papers. They consumed every particle of them except the uppermost sheet and the edges, supplying their place with clay. The consequence was, that although the heap of documents seemed to be correct, there was nothing but a mass of clay galleries and a single sheet of paper at the top. So voracious are they, that even a piece of paper wrapped round a bottle was eaten, the termites building a gallery of clay in order to reach it under cover.] If we reflect on the prodigious numbers of those insects, and their power and rapidity of destroying, we cannot but admire the wisdom of Providence in creating so indefatigable and useful an agent in countries where the decay of vegetable substances is rapid in proportion to the heat of the climate. We have already remarked that they always prefer decaying or dead timber; and it is indeed a very general law among insects which feed on wood to prefer what is unsound; the same principle holds with respect to fungi, lichens, and other parasitical plants.