12 FARMERS” BULLETIN 759. 
Injury by termites to vineyards has occasionally been recorded 
in North America. Usually only the old vines are attacked, or dead 
or injured parts. Signs of attack are sickly foliage or abortive 
buds, or the injury is observed at the time of cutting down to stock 
or grafting. 
DAMAGE TO SHRUBS, FLOWERS, AND GREENHOUSE STOCK. 
White ants injure a variety of shrubs, weeds, and flowers in gardens 
as well as in greenhouses. Heavily manured flower beds are a source 
of infestation to the stems of flowers as well as to the woodwork of 
houses. In greenhouses old label sticks, the wooden uprights sup- 
porting wooden benches set on or in the ground, and the wooden 
bench bottoms and plant pots are often attacked by white ants, and 
this leads to subsequent attack of the growing plants. 
In the Greenhouse Insect Investigations of the Bureau of Ento- 
mology, carried on at Washington, D. C., records have been made of 
serious injury to many plants grown under glass, and control methods 
have been tried by Arthur D. Borden, who has found that heliotropes, 
begonias, bedding geraniums, carnations, chrysanthemums, and roses 
are seriously injured by white ants. One hundred and eighty out of 
1,000 heliotrope plants were killed the first week after being potted 
from the seeding pans. As many as 75 white ants have been found 
in a 4-inch pot of helotrope. The insects come up through the 
ground and form dirt galleries over the supports, or burrow up through 
the wooden bench legs and run galleries the full length of the wooden 
benches. They enter the soil through the drainage holes of the pots 
and eat out the main stalk of the root, killing the plant very quickly. 
PROTECTION OF WOODWORK IN BUILDINGS. 
PREVENTION OF THE DAMAGE. 
Since white ants are difficult to eliminate from the woodwork of 
a building when once established, every precaution should be taken 
to prevent their gaining an entrance 
In order to prevent the insects from reaching the woodwork of 
buildings from their nests 1m the ground, the foundations should, 
where possible, be entirely of stone, brick, or concrete, including the 
pillars in the basement or cellar. The walls, partitions, and flooring 
in the ground floor, basement, or cellar should also be of concrete. 
Wooden flooring can be laid over this concrete floor if more desirable. 
An air space should be left between the concrete floor and the wooden 
floor laid overit. Concrete floors should be laid on a gravel base which 
will prevent dampness and cracking. The points of juncture between 
conerete walls and flooring should be filled in by rounding off the 
concrete at these places, since cracks often occur where the wall and 
