They never venture in sight except in extreme cases. No one is ignorant of the terrible destruction these insects occasion to the works of man. Invisible to those whom they threaten, they push on their galleries to the very walls of their houses. They perforate the floors, the beams, the wood-work, the furniture, respecting always the surface of the objects attacked in such a manner that it is impossible to be aware of their hidden ravages. They even take care to prevent the buildings they eat away from falling by filling up with mortar the parts they have hollowed out. But these precautions are only employed if the place seems suitable, and if they intend to prolong their sojourn there. In the other case they destroy the wood with inconceivable rapidity. They have been known, in one single night, to pierce the whole of a table leg from top to bottom, and then the table itself; and then, still continuing to pierce their way, to descend through the opposite leg, after having devoured the contents of a trunk placed upon the table. On account of the devastations which they occasion, Linnæus has called the white ant the greatest plague of the Indies. There exist in France two species of termites, the _Termes lucifugus_, a little insect of a brilliant black (at least in the male), with russety legs, which is common enough in the moors of Gascony; and the Yellow-necked White Ant (_Termes flavicollis_), which lives in the interior of trees and does a great deal of mischief in Spain and in the south of France to olive and other precious trees, whilst the first attacks oak and fir trees. Latreille established that it is the _Termes lucifugus_ which causes such havoc at La Rochelle, at Rochefort, at Saintes, at Tournay-Charente, in the Isle of Aix, &c., where many houses have been completely undermined by these terrible insects. But M. de Quatrefages[114] has proved that the habits of the termes found in towns differ in many essential points from the habits of termes in the country. And so it is most probable that the former belong to an exotic species, which must have been unfortunately imported into France by a merchant vessel. According to M. Bobe-Moreau,[115] it was only in 1797 that termites were discovered for the first time in Rochefort, in a house which had stood for a long while uninhabited, and which they had completely undermined. In 1804, Latreille relates, as a "hearsay," that the termites had for some years made the inhabitants of Rochefort uneasy; but in 1829 the same author tells a very different tale. He speaks with dismay of the ravages committed by this insect in the workshops belonging to the Royal Navy. The importation of the termes into France is then of recent date. A note which was sent to M. de Quatrefages by M. Beltrémieux, fixes with still greater accuracy the date of the importation of the termites; it must have taken place about 1780, a period at which the brothers Poupet, rich shipowners, caused bales of