776 Bulletin American Museum of Natural History. [Yo\. XXIII, 



Smeathman (1781) was the first to recognize the growth covering the 

 garden as being that of a fungus, akhough he was not aware that it bore any 

 important relation to the insects. In his interesting account of the African 

 Termes hellicosus he refers to the gardens as "nurseries." "There is one 

 remarkable circumstance attending the nurseries. They are always slightly 

 overgrown with mould, and plentifully sprinkled with small white globules 

 about the size of a small pin's head. These, at first, Mr. S. took to be the 

 eggs; but on bringing them to the microscope, they evidently appeared to 

 be a species of mushroom, in shape like our eatable mushroom in the young 

 state in which it is pickled. They appear, when whole, white like snow a 

 little thawed and then frozen again, and when bruised seem composed of 

 an infinite number of pellucid particles, approaching to oval forms and 

 difficult to separate; the mouldiness seems likewise to be the same kind of 

 substance. The nurseries are inclosed in chambers of clay, like those which 

 contain the provisions, but much larger. In the early state of the nest they 

 are not larger than a hazel-nut, but in great hills are often as large as a 

 child's head of a year old." I reproduce in Plate LIII, Figs. 55 and 56, 

 Smeathman's figures of a "nursery," and of three of the "mushrooms" 

 enlarged, as these are the earliest known illustrations of the fungus garden 

 of any insect. 



Hagen (1860), in his well-known monograph of the Termitidse, quotes 

 a communication which he received from Nietner of Ceylon on a species 

 referred to Termes fatalis. This observer describes the vaulted earthen 

 chambers of the nest and the fungus gardens which they contained. The 

 latter "are hemispherical or broadly conical, flat or concave at the base. 

 They are nowhere attached, but stand out freely in the chambers, from 

 which they may be removed without injury. They consist of a soft bread- 

 like ]nass of gnawed wood; are brown in color and when broken open golden 

 gray. These nests are always found to be full of minute microscopic fungi, 

 the finest and most beautiful imaginable. The corpuscles, as large as a 

 fine pin's head and composed of small beads, grow in clusters on a net-work 

 of roots and young brood; all resembling crystals of ice or silver." Nietner 

 "does not believe that this fungus bears any other relation to the termites 

 than that the substance of the nest conduces to its growth. The bread-like 

 nests, threaded with fungi, consist of small galleries and cells which often 

 contain so many eggs and young that the whole appears to form one living 

 mass." 



Although, as shown by these citations, the termite gardens were known 

 long before those of the ants, their true significance was not understood till 

 after the publication of Moeller's work (1893) on the South American Attii. 

 Holtermann in 1899 made the first careful study of the gardens of Termes 



