416 AUSTRALIAN TERMJTID.i^:, 



upon their habits having coine to me from all quarters), that I 

 am enabled to enlarge my observations and add much to our 

 general knowledge of their distribution and habits. 



I have also had the advantage, in earlier years, of travelling 

 over a considerable portion of the interior of Australia, and after- 

 wards round the whole coast, and therefore start with a personal 

 knowledge of these pests in many phases of camp life, and a fair 

 idea of their distribution over this great island. 



Part I. — Distribution. 



In going into the literature on " white ants," I have consulted 

 a great number of works of voyages and travels, as well as the 

 scientific papers available; and during these investigations I have 

 been much struck with certain interesting facts relating to the 

 geographical distribution of termites. Therefore, before dealing 

 with the Australian species, I propose to glance at those from 

 other parts of the world. 



In the fossil fauna of the Old World termites are very well 

 represented; evidently in bygone epochs, as now, at certain 

 seasons of the year the winged forms swarmed in myriads out of 

 the nests. Fluttering about in their generally aimless manner, 

 many of them alighted upon the soft resin coating the trunks of the 

 pine trees, and became entombed. It is a noticeable fact that 

 nearly all the fossil species have been described from winged 

 forms, no soldiers or workers of most of them being met with. 

 The resin changed to amber has retained the remnants of the 

 prehistoric insect world, and it is to its preservative powers that 

 we owe most of our knowledge of the fossil termites, though 

 others have been described from other formations both from 

 Europe and America. 



In 1848 Professor Heer published his "Ueberfossile Ameisen"* 

 describing the fossil insects from the Tertiary beds of Oeningen 

 and Radoboj. This, the first systematical study of the fossil 



* Afterwards translated and published in the Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. 

 London, vi. 1850. 



