SOME TROUBLESOME INVADERS 371 



or more. The clapboards, eaten in many places to a shell, 

 were readily broken by the fingers, the ends of the boards 

 especially being eaten and broken away. The window- 

 casing above and below the window was almost completely 

 hollowed out ; even the shingles on the roof contained 

 many ants ; and the floor was also somewhat eaten. This 

 damage extended across both ends of the lean-to, which 

 was about ten feet wide, but did not reach the main part 

 of the house. 



" Two years before, in 1884, the owner had taken aboard 

 from the cave to the granary, and in 1886 the floor of the 

 oats bin had broken through, spilling the oats upon the 

 ground. An examination of pieces of wood from this 

 building showed that the ants had practically eaten up 

 the floor, and that they had also gnawed away the surface 

 of the wooden lining of the bin as high as the grain extended 

 sometimes to a depth of half an inch or more. In the 

 woods, near the sawmill, whence the oak lumber for this 

 farmer's cave originally came, I found an abundance of 

 white ants in fallen rotten wood. 



" After my visit the owner destroyed his granary and 

 thoroughly cleaned out the cave, burning up all the damaged 

 wood, but neglected to follow my advice to kill all the ants 

 on his premises with kerosene or gasoline. They were 

 consequently still continuing their injuries to the house 

 in 1888, and had also infested a corn-crib near by." 



There are other instances on record of injury to build- 

 ings by termites in this country. A large area of the floor- 

 ing in the United States National Museum was, at one 

 time, seriously undermined and weakened by a colony of 

 termites that could not be located. It finally became 

 necessary to replace the wooden floor entirely by one of 



