White Ants 



accidentally introduced into Europe many years ago. It de- 

 stroyed the imperial greenhouses at Schonbron, near Vienna, so 

 that they were replaced by houses with iron frames. Another 

 species which is widely distributed in the United States, but 

 which does not seem to be especially common, is also found in 

 Europe and is one of the most abundant and destructive termites 

 found there. This is Termes hicifugus Rossi. It has not yet 

 been definitely determined whether this insect is a native of 

 Europe or of America. It occurs in all of the Mediterranean 

 countries in Europe and is found in Texas, Kansas, Colorado and 

 Southern California, and perhaps elsewhere. Another species, 

 known as Termes tubifonnans Buckley, is a form of curious 

 habits occurring in Texas, in the spring, beneath and within 

 patches of cow-dung, and after midsummer making tubes around 

 grass stems and the stems of other plants, nesting probably deep 

 in the ground. Still another Texas form, known as Etitermes 

 nigriceps Haldeman, is a small species which constructs nests, 

 apparently of cow dung, which are attached to the trunks of 

 trees. Buckley wrote of this form, " It was about sunset on the 

 22d of October, i860, when I first saw this species in a field, 

 where both workers and nasuti were carrying home seeds of 

 grasses and weeds. They marched in dense columns along 

 pathways leading to a hole near the base of a stump, into which 

 they entered. * * * They dwell in the ground where they 

 have rooms, seldom more than one to two inches long, con- 

 nected by tunnels. * * * After rains — which are of rare occur- 

 rence in that climate — they make semi-cylindrical tubes, which 

 lie on the ground with a length of from three to six inches. 

 These arched ways sometimes intercept each other, being con- 

 nected with chambers; but they rarely work by day above the 

 surface and never in bright sunshine." 



Of the commonest of our species, Termes flavipes, it is greatly 

 to be regretted that no thoroughly good account of its life history 

 has been published. The true queen, in fact, has never been 

 found, unless it should turn out that a large queen found two or 

 three years ago by Mr. H. G. Hubbard in the mountains in 

 southern Arizona should belong to this species. In the Northern 

 States its nests are to be found under almost any decaying log, 

 and, although many entomologists have examined these nests, 

 they have never found the queen. From Baltimore southward, 



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