502 STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



White Ants, — Termesflovipes, Koller. {Family Termiticlce — Sub-order neii- 

 roptera). — Early this season I received some insects looking much like Albino 

 ants from the enterprising proprietor of the Valley City Greenhouses of Grand 

 Rapids, Mr. John Suttle, with the information that they burrowed in the shelves 

 of his greenhouses, in which burrows the breeding was done; but not satisfied 

 with riddling the shelves, they come up from beneath into the flower-pots and 

 destroyed the plants, thus becoming a serious pest. Mr. Suttle further states 

 that he has applied carbolic acid soap to the shelves, which was an immediate, 

 though not a permanent remedy, and is desirous to receive information as to 

 name, history, habits, and remedies. 



These insects are the Termes flavipes, Koller, and the only representative 

 our country affords of those most interesting and wonderful insects, commonly 

 known as White Ants. This term, though, is a misnomer, for true ants belong 

 to the same sub-order as our bees and wasps, — the Hymenoptera, — which coin- 

 prises the highest insects; while the insects in question belong, with the 

 dragon-flies and all other lace wings, to the lowest sub-order, — Neuroplera. 

 Yet these so-called ants not only resemble our true ants in outward appearance, 

 but in their nature and habits as well; thus forming one of those links in the 

 animal kingdom which seem to unite widely separated groups. Like the true 

 ants, these white ants burrow in the ground, and have in their colonies not 

 only the winged male and female, whose only work, like the drones and queen 

 of the hive, is to increase and perpetuate their kind ; but also wingless forms, 

 some small, with large round heads and small jaws, called workers, which per- 

 form all the labor of the colony, and others larger, with immense heads and 

 jaws, whose only business is to defend the colony. The female after mating 

 loses her wings, and becomes so distended with eggs as to be many thousand 

 times larger than in the days of her virginity. I have one from Africa in my 

 possession whose prodigious abdomen is as large as a man's thumb, while the 

 rest of the body is but a mere speck at the end. Of course, in this condition, she 

 is most helpless, being fed, cared for, and even her eggs carried from her by the 

 ever active workers; though when I state the fact that she lays daily 80,000 

 eggs, no one will complain of this seeming lack of energy. 



The Termes flavipes is found all through our country, under old boards and 

 rails, into which they burrow, and beneath which in the earth will be found 

 their extensive tunnels. They sometimes bore through the walls of houses 

 into book-cases, and sometimes they even tunnel the books in a most exasper- 

 ating manner. Some of the public archives in Springfield, Illinois, were thus 

 injured to an alarming extent a few years since. I once saw, while at Cam- 

 bridge, Massachusetts, a whole row of books which had been thus perforated, 

 affording an opportunity to easily wire them together. Humboldt, in speaking 

 of the white ants of Central and South America, omit in discussing their rav- 

 ages, says it is rare to find books reaching back more than fifty or sixty years. 



In South Africa the white ants rear mortar huts ten or twelve feet high, and 

 suflBciently strong to bear a bull. If these are broken down, the soldiers will 

 fight with a ferocity which is a terror even to man himself, for woe to the bare- 

 footed negroes on whose flesh their formidable jaws close, as they know no let 

 up till torn in pieces. In India and Africa their destructiveness is unparalleled, 

 for not only clothing, books, and furniture, but even the dwellings themselves 

 are totally destroyed by these voracious Termites. In their attacks upon books 

 and furniture they enter from beneath and eat all but a thin shell, leaving no 

 outward sign of their dastardly work, so the owner knows nothing of the mis- 

 chief wrought till his possessions crumble beneath his touch. 



