288 



Late in January of this year, a number of the males were sent 

 to the Cambridge Museum by Mr. Allen, of Salem, who asserted 

 that they had done much injury to the grape-vines in his forcing- 

 houses ; a week or two after Mr. Scudder visited the greenhouses, 

 and found the dead males collected in large numbers upon the 

 moisture covering the sashes above, and vast numbers of the 

 workers and soldiers swarming under and within every damp 

 piece of wood. Mr. Allen complained that they were not only 

 destroying the ground beams of his house, but that it was impos- 

 sible for him anywhere to "layer" a vine without the portion 

 beneath the ground being entirely eaten through by the ants, 

 (even several of his large vines, two and three inches in di- 

 ameter at the ground, had died,) and that the roots upon 

 examination had proved to be mere shells, the interior filled 

 with these ants. Notwithstanding these representations of a 

 careful and interested observer, he was inclined to think, from 

 the well-known habits of Termites, that the true cause of the in- 

 jury was some disease of the vine, and that the Termites simply 

 carried away the rotten material. Within a ^ew days, however, 

 he had received the root of a vine, showing similar signs of death 

 with those previously destroyed, which he exhibited to the So- 

 ciety ; the whole root was thoroughly chambered by these Ter- 

 mites, the excavations being unmistakably carried into the solid 

 living wood ; an opening along one side showed the chambers 

 penetrating an inch or more above the level of the ground. Upon 

 a careful comparison of the soldiers and wingless males of this 

 species with those of Termes belUcosus of Smeathman, he had 

 ascertained that they were the representatives of distinct though 

 closely allied genera. He believed that this was the first time 

 that any species of Termes or an allied genus has been proved to 

 attack living vegetable matter so as to cause its destruction ; for, 

 although Smeathman asserts that they do sometimes feed on liv- 

 ing plants. Dr. Savage states that trees and shrubs are frequently 

 seen growing through the nests of the Termites, yet always alive. 

 A colony of these ants had been kept by Mr. Scudder for some 

 months in a pot with moist earth and rotten wood. On examina- 

 tion it proved that the whole surface, to the depth of two or 

 three inches, was completely riddled with minute passages, about 

 large enough to allow one of these ants to pass another. 



