Much has been said about the musical spider of Pellisson. Another and less-known anecdote is not less striking. One of those little victims which are trained into virtuosi before they are ripe of age,--Berthome, illustrious in 1800,--owed his astonishing successes to the savage confinement in which he was forced to work. At eight he astounded and stupefied his hearers by his mastery of the violin. In his perpetual solitude he had a comrade whom no one suspected,--a spider. It was lodged at first in a quiet corner, but it gave itself license to advance from the corner to the music-stand, from the music-stand to the child, even climbing upon the mobile arm which held the bow. There, a palpitating and breathless amateur, it paused and listened. It was an audience in itself. The artist needed nothing more to fill him with inspiration and double his energy. Unfortunately the child had a stepmother, who, one day, introducing an amateur into the sanctuary, saw the sensible animal at its post. A blow from her slipper annihilated the auditory. The child fell swooning to the ground, was ill for three months, and died,--heartbroken! [Illustration] Book the Third. COMMUNITIES OF INSECTS. [Illustration: I.--THE TERMITES, OR WHITE ANTS.] [Illustration] CHAPTER I. THE CITY IN THE SHADOWS: THE TERMITES, OR WHITE ANTS. M. de Prefontaine (cited by Huber, in his work on "The Ants") relates that, when travelling in Guiana, he saw a party of negroes besieging certain fantastic edifices which he calls ant-hills. They did not venture to attack them except from a distance, and with firearms; having first taken the precaution, moreover, to dig a little trench and fill it with water, to check the progress of the beleaguered army and drown its battalions, if they adventured a sortie. These edifices are not the habitations of Ants, but of Termites,--quite a different species of insect; which are found not only in Guiana, but in Africa, New Holland, and in the prairies of North America. A host of travellers have described them. But the standard and most instructive authority is that of Smeathman, which now lies before us, enriched with excellent plates. The drawings are taken from the termite-hills of Africa.