43 



the nail holes ; but this does no harm, but is rather a proof that the work 

 has been well done. 



Of course, it is difficult to perfectly isolate a house from the gi'ound, 

 for often after all the care taken someone may build a flight of steps up 

 to the front without any precautions, furnishing an ideal roadway for the 

 termite; or else someone leans a beam against the wall and gives them 

 another means of ingress. In the country where wood is chiefly used for 

 fuel, and is carted in and' stacked close to the house, it is quite evident 

 that logs infested with small colonies of white ants can be easily intro- 

 duced, which, under favourable conditions, might emerge and find a 

 lodgment elsewhere, and thus get into the house timbers. In North 

 Queensland many of the houses are built upon 11-feet piles, so that there 

 is plenty of room beneath, and in such houses it is seldom that the termites 

 get into the woodwork. 



When once the white ants have gained an entrance into a building, the 

 first thing is to find where they started work and the extent and area 

 affected by their depredations. When this has been ascertained, the outer 

 woodwork can be removed, and the damaged timber, where not too far 

 gone, painted with corrosive sublimate (bi-chloride of mercury) which has 

 been dissolved in spirits of wine or water. Sugar or treacle, to which 

 arsenic has been blended, if placed in the excavations they are working, 

 will kill off large numbers, for they feed upon it readily, and even eat the 

 dead ones that have first succumbed to the poison, so that it soon reduces 

 their numbers. 



There have been many suggestions made as to the possibility of injecting 

 steam, the fumes of carbolic acid, gas, &c., into the infested timber, but 

 none have been of any practical value. Sometimes the white ants get into 

 a house, and after doing a certain amount of damage, disappear without 

 going any further into the timber. Again, white ants attack a building 

 and may be in it for many years, and it is apparently more or less immune 

 and prevented any serious damage. In the old Naval Depot, 140 George- 

 street, under the floors there is quite a large nest, which has contained a 

 more or less active colony for many years, yet they never seem to have 

 spread from the large beam where they raised their clay galleries. 



The question of white ant resisting or distasteful timber is often raised, 

 and though the hardness or otherwise of wood seems to have little influence 

 on the steel-like jaws of the workers, for they will tunnel through some of 

 our driest dead hard eucalyptus tree trunks with the greatest ease, there 

 is not the least doubt they much prefer some timbers. I have frequently 

 seen red pine boards, round which the white ants have passed, hardly 

 scratched upon the surface, when a clear pine board behind it has been 

 reduced to ribbons. Some of our native woods are much more liable to 

 their attacks, among them sawn stringybark timber. Jarrah is said to 

 resist their attacks, but I have seen a board from West Australia much 

 damaged by them. Desert cypress they are certainly not fond of when 

 sawn up, but in the fallen trees, logs, or telegraph poles they are very 



