10 



in spite of all precautions. As soon as a branch dies it is attacked, and 

 in many places no stumps or dead wood is left in the scrubby forests. 

 On the table-lands everything is swept up, as it were, by these invisible 

 gnomes, who, as forest scavengers, do their duty to perfection. If one 

 cuts some grass for a bed, and leaves it lying upon the ground for twenty- 

 four hours, anywhere on the Lower Flinders, it will be cut up into fine 

 chaff by the termites that have swarmed up from the ground beneath, 

 attracted by the scent of the drying grass ; and if one is inexperienced 

 enough to leave his blankets upon the top of it he will find all the lower 

 folds riddled with holes. All kinds of implements that had been left out in 

 the paddocks, such as earth-scoops and waggons, on the Cambridge Downs 

 Station, were brought in with the felloes of the wheels (hard, seasoned 

 timber) gnawed to a shell; while the storekeeper had to be continually 

 turning over his stock, or he would find the large white termite (Term es 



errehundas) boring galleries through 

 rolls of mosquito nets, books, and 

 boots, and making nests in the cai't- 

 saddles. They made their way into 

 the cases of jam and tinned meats, 

 carrying the clay in between the 

 tins, and causing them to rust and 

 spoil the contents. At a hut on this 

 station where I used to camp, the 

 sides were built of upright saplings 

 of ti-tree, about 6 inches in diameter; 

 the termites, coming up from below, 

 had eaten out the centre, reducing 

 most of them to pipes of bark. In 

 the silence of the night I have lain 

 awake listening to the millions of 

 tiny jaws gnawing at these tim- 

 bers, voices of the night as strange 

 and uncanny as one could well 

 imagine. 



Past Normanton onwards to Port 

 Darwin we are still in thickly- 

 infested country, and about 10 miles 

 out of Palmerston find some of the 

 tallest ant-nests in the world. In 

 the same district are also found the 

 magnetic nests, remarkable for always pointing north and south. 



In that portion of north West Australia stretching across from Cam- 

 bridge Gulf to Roebuck Bay, known as the Kimberley district (where 

 I spent twelve months), and probably as far as the De Grey River, all 

 through the open forest flats and along the edge of the sandy " Pindan " 

 country, are found numbers of large, broad nests, from 5 to 6 feet in 



Nest of the Spinifex Eutermes 



(Eutermes tnodi(2.) 



Hull's Creek, Kimberley, W.A. ; 14 feet higli. 



