But why they should find it wisest to perch their nest aloft is as difficult to guess, as to guess why they take the trouble to build this gallery up to it, instead of walking up the stem in the open air.

It may be that they are afraid of birds.

It may be, too, that they actually dislike the light.

At all events, the majority of them--the workers and soldiers, I believe, without exception--are blind, and do all their work by an intensely developed sense of touch, and it may be of smell and hearing also.

Be that as it may, we should have seen them, had we had time to wait, repair the breach in their gallery, with as much discipline and division of labour as average human workers in a manufactory, before the business of food- getting was resumed.
We hurried on along the trace, which now sloped rapidly downhill.