As we shall soon have done with Liberia, I must not forget to insert, among the motley records of this journal, some account of its ants. The immense number of these insects, which infest every part of the land, is a remarkable provision in the economy of Africa, as well as of other tropical countries. Though very destructive to houses, fences, and other articles of value, their ravages are far more than repaid by the benefits bestowed; for they act as scavengers in removing the great quantity of decaying vegetable matter, which would otherwise make the atmosphere intolerable. They perform their office both within doors and without. Frequently, the "drivers," as they are called, enter houses in myriads, and, penetrating to the minutest recesses, destroy everything that their omnivorous appetite can render eatable. Whatever has the principle of decay in it, is got rid of at once. All vermin meet their fate from these destroyers. Food, clothing, necessaries, superfluities, mere trash, and valuable property, are alike in their regard, and equally acceptable to their digestive powers. They would devour this journal with as little compunction as so much blank paper--and a sermon as readily as the journal--nor would either meal lie heavy on their stomachs. They float on your coffee, and crawl about your plate, and accompany the victuals to your mouth.
The ants have a Queen, whom the colonists call Bugga-Bug. Her subjects are divided into three classes; the Laborers, who do nothing but work--the Soldiers, who do nothing but fight--and the Gentry, who neither work nor fight, but spend their lives in the pleasant duty of continuing their species. The habitations of these insects, as specimens of mechanical ingenuity, are far superior to the houses of the natives, and are really the finest works of architecture to be met with on the African coast. In height, these edifices vary from four to fifteen or twenty feet, and are sometimes ten or twelve feet in diameter at the base. They contain apartments for magazines, for nurseries, and for all other domestic, social, and public purposes, communicating with one another, and with the exterior, by innumerable galleries and passages. The clay, which forms the material of the buildings, is rendered very compact, by a glutinous matter, mixed with earth; and all the passages, many of which extend great distances under ground, are plastered with the same kind of stucco. Captain Tuckey, in his expedition to the river Zaire, discovered ant-hills composed of similar materials to the above, but which, in shape, precisely resembled gigantic toad-stools, as high as a one-story house. In this part of Africa, they have the form of a mound. At the present day, when the community-principle is attracting so much attention, it would seem to be seriously worth while for the Fourierites to observe both the social economy and the modes of architecture of these African ants. Providence may, if it see fit, make the instincts of the lower orders of creation a medium of divine revelations to the human race: and, at all events, the aforesaid Fourierites might stumble upon hints, in an ant-hill, for the convenient arrangement of those edifices, which, if I mistake not, they have christened Phalanxteries.