G 



never safe from attack. The sudden crumbling into masses of dust 

 of chairs, desks, or other furniture, and the mining and destruction 

 of collections of books and papers, are matters of common experience, 

 very little hint of the damage being given by a surface inspection, 

 even when the interior of timbers or boards has been thoroughly 

 eaten out, leaving a mere paper shell. 



While confining their work almost solel}" to moistened or decaying 

 timbers or vegetable material of any sort, and books and papers that 

 are somewhat moist, thej' are known to work also in living trees, carry- 

 ing their mines through the moist and nearly dead heart wood. In 

 this way some valuable trees in Boston were so injured as to make 

 their removal necessary. In Florida they are often the cause of 

 great damage to orange trees, working around the crowiis and in 

 the roots of trees. They are sometimes also the occasion of consid- 

 erable injury to other trees; and quite recently the writer received 

 information of injurious attack on pecan, chestnut, and walnut trees 

 at Augusta, Ga. They also cause loss in conservatories, attacking 

 cuttings and the roots of plants. Such injuries have been brought 

 to our notice several times by florists, and Mr. Chittenden, of this 

 office, informs me that they are apt to attack the large stems of 

 herbaceous plants like geraniuins. The source of the Termites in 

 greenhouses is usually the more or less decayed woodwork of the 

 building itself or the plant benches, and they have even been found 

 working in label sticks, the removal of which gave relief from the 

 damage done to plants. In one instance, also, the Termites, coming 

 from the wooden benches, entered potted plants through the drain- 

 holes of the pots. In prairie regions their work is necessarily on the 

 roots and tubers of plants or the stems of grasses or other low-grow- 

 ing plants. 



A very common form of injury to potatoes growing in rich soil or 

 where there is a considerable quantity of decaying vegetable matter 

 has often been noted, and the cause for it has been obscure or 

 assigned to insects innocent of the damage. That the white ant is 

 the culprit in this case was discovered by Mr. F. A. Marlatt, who 

 describes the injury to the tubers as having the form of scars or pits 

 covering the surface, the pits varying in shape from irregular holes 

 to long, irregular excavations sometimes extending far into the 

 potato, but commonly to a depth from an eighth to a fourth of an 

 inch. In all cases these pits are more or less overhung and covered 

 by the dead and dying skin, and are also lined with the cellular tis- 

 sue of potato, showing that the insect cares most for the starch and 

 water of the tuber. Such damage is liable to be found not onl}^ in 

 soil rich in vegetable matter but also in newly cleared soil or soil con- 

 taining the loose and decayed portions of trees, and in the instance 

 cited above was in soil recently cleared of an old apple orchard. 



