THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 2l7 



what is given in the Synopsis, I have not re-copied my description. The 

 species arrived just in the last moment, when my manuscript was to be 

 sent to Washington, therefore I have not given more details. The char- 

 acters quoted — antennae short, club large, almost orbicular ; wings short 

 the apex very much dilated ; the venation peculiar, simple — make it 

 doubtful if M. ? pygviaea belongs to this genus. 



i<URTHER INJURY TO LIVING PLANTS BY WHITE ANTS. 



BY SAMUEL H. SCUDDER, CAMBRIDGE, MASS. 



More than twenty-five years since (Proc. Boston Soc. Nat. Hist., v. 7, 

 p. 287-288) I published an account of serious injury to living grape-vines 

 in hot-houses in Salem, Mass., by our common species of white ants. 

 Termes flavipes. No further notice of their injury to living vegetation 

 appears to have been taken until a few years ago, when Prof. J. H. Corn- 

 stock, then government entomologist, stated (Rep. Comm. Agric, 1879, 

 207-8) that they had been found in Texas and Florida " girdling the bark' 

 of orange trees and guava bushes near the surface of the ground, or eating 

 out the interior of sugar-cane and other plants." "When white ants infest 

 living plants," the report goes on to state, " they attack that part which is 

 at or just below the surface of the ground. In the case of pampas grass, 

 the base of the stalk is hollowed ; with woody plants, as orange trees and 

 guava bushes, the bark of the base of the trunk is eaten, and frequently 

 the tree is completely girdled ; with sugar-cane the most serious injury is 

 the destruction of the seed cane." 



Still more recently, Dr. H. A. Hagen published in the Canadian 

 Entomologist (v. 17, p. 134-136) another instance here in Cambridge 

 where living maple trees were largely infested by them, though the ants 

 appeared to have done little damage, the trees being "apparently in good 

 condition," but one of them being felled it was found that for a couple of 

 feet above the ground, to the depth of an inch from the surface, the trunk 

 was extensively burrowed by the white ants. 



In this same article, after referring to the injury reported from Salem, 

 Dr. Hagen adds: '"The earth in the hot-houses here in Cambridge is 

 largely infested by white ants, but as far as I know, no destruction of 



