1071 
personal experience their love of books, maps, furniture, clothing, and 
apparatus, while from others I have heard of their destroying phonograph 
boxes, gunstocks, trunks, school furniture, and houses. 
The Insular Treasury suffered from these insects the inconvenience 
of the loss of some $1,500,000 worth of revenue stamps, stored in an 
iron vault encased in some 30 inches of cement on all sides, the termites 
having entered from the outside of the building, through cracks in the 
cement, caused by settling, and then through crevices between the iron 
plates of the vault. ; 
One of the most useful preparations against the attacks of termites is 
found in the substance called “ Carbolineum.” It has been found that 
two coats of this substance applied to any woodwork liable to be attacked 
by termites effectually preserves it from damage for about two years. 
Ants of many species are common throughout the Islands. The most 
troublesome species, however, is the little red ant (Monomorium latinode 
Mayr), which is certainly omnipresent in either the broadest or the most 
restricted sense of-the word. They make their nests in every available 
place about houses and feed on all kinds of animal substances, even 
attacking leather sweatbands in hats, patent leather shoes, which they 
usually puncture somewhere on the front where the damage shows most, 
and as for entomological specimens, either dead or alive, which are sent 
through the mails or left upon tables in the laboratory they make short 
work of destroying them completely. A piece of white, starched cambric 
tacked over a window to modify the light was completely riddled in a 
few weeks’ time by these little insects in search of the flies, beetles, and 
other forms which found a place between the cloth and the window panes. 
Unless kerosene be placed in vessels of water in which the legs of 
tables stand, the ants will find some means of crossing the “moat” if they 
have to form a living bridge, as has been observed by me very frequently. 
Articles suspended from the highest ceiling are not isolated unless petro- 
leum be placed on a wad of cotton around the string or wire of suspen- 
sion. A favorite place of rendezvous for these ants is around a lighted 
lamp, when atmospheric conditions cause large numbers of other insects 
to fly into the house in the evening. ‘They attack all kinds of insects 
and soon dismember and carry them off. All experiments in the breed- 
ing of insects must be done on tables isolated from their attacks, or 
otherwise eggs, larvee, pup and adults would be destroyed over night. 
Destruction of their ground nests results in the building of others by 
the individuals which escape. The only feasible method so far discovered 
to combat the pests has been the continued application of kerosene to 
vessels of water in which the legs of the furniture are placed. Sometimes 
a single spider web, the work of a moment, will furnish means of 
transit to these little marauders and the labors of weeks will be brought 
to naught. 
49083——5 
