THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 135 



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

 been observed. I was very much interested by the information from Mr. 

 F. W. Putnam that in a garden in Irwing street Uving maples were largely 

 infested by white ants. The evidence of the truth of this information was 

 apparent by the first glance at the trees. They were three in number 

 some few yards separated, more than 60 feet high, two feet diameter at 

 base, and apparently in good condition, except that the bark was in cer- 

 tain places affected or split. Those places had somewhat the appearance 

 of the well-known winter splits of the bark of trees. In removing parts 

 of the bark, directly living white ants, workers and a few soldiers, were 

 found, collected, and proved to belong to T. flavipcs. Closer observation 

 showed that small open gangs, covered outside by the loose bark, ran 

 along the tree to a height of 30 feet or more. There were on this estate 

 no old rotten stumps, but some of the adjacent uninhabited estates con- 

 tained them, where probably the nest may be found ; neverthe- 

 less the whole estate was so overrun by white ants that they had made 

 along the fence a long track covered with the hard clay-like mud with 

 which they usually fill the eaten parts. As the boards of the fence were 

 thin, it was perhaps judged safer to build the canal outside instead of on 

 the interior of the boards. The house, a framehouse, about 10 years old, 

 the stables and the wooden sheds were entirely intact. The estate near 

 to it seemed to be entirely free of the pest. The foliage of the infested 

 trees looked very remarkable. Mr. Sereno Watson, the curator of the 

 Cambridge Herbarium, was at first at loss to determine the leaves ; the 

 size, the shape and the venation would not agree with any known species. 

 But when he saw the tree, he was directly sure that it was only the com- 

 mon Actr rubruin. Some fresh shoots near the base of the tree had un- 

 mistakably the leaves of the common red maple. All the other leaves 

 were very small, mostly not more than two inches broad, the midian lobe 

 often short, sometimes blunt and not longer than the side lobes ; the rips 

 below were about yellowish and decidedly less dark than on the red maple. 

 The owner of the estate had for ten years not observed any change in the 

 foliage of the trees. During the last winter the upper part of one tree, 

 some 20 feet, broke down in a gale, and proved to be not infested by 

 white ants. Now it was considered safe to fell the whole tree. The bark 

 was, in the place where the gangs went up along the tree, extensively bored 

 and hollowed by the white ants. The wood itself was only two feet above 

 the ground, filled with the common white ant holes and gangs, but no 



