10 FARMERS” BULLETIN 1759. 
at the base of imjured trees. Sometimes the infested trees are 
plastered with earthlike tubes or galleries. 
Particularly in the South, termites render insect, fire, and disease 
killed timber unmerchantable, unless the timber is utilized within a 
reasonable period after being killed. They also damage the roots 
and lower trunks of injured living trees. 
DAMAGE TO FIELD CROPS AND GRAZING LAND. 
In the Southern States white ants occasionally injure the stems 
and roots of a great variety of apparently healthy field crops, includ- 
ing both grain and truck crops, among which may be listed corn, 
‘as “2 5 
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1 tet 
Fan 
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Fia.10.—Book from library at Van Buren, Ark.,ruined by white ants. June, 1915. ( Author’s illustration. ) 
cotton, sugar cane, rice, grasses, potatoes, and a great variety of 
garden vegetables. 
Injury to corn in the prairie region of Kansas has resulted from 
the earlier presence of the insects in enormous numbers in the heavily 
sodded soil where they feed on the roots of the vegetation. Some- 
times this injury to growing corn is due also to the method of plowing 
under old stubble. 
In the prairie regions of Texas and Arizona a tube-forming termite ! 
lives in the ground, feeding on the roots of grass and other vegeta- 
tion, and is often found. under and within dry cow dung and under 
stones. This species sometimes destroys the vegetation over large 
areas of grazing land. One of its characteristic habits is to cover 
1 Hamitermes tubiformans Buckley. 
