780 Bulletin American Museum of Natural History. [Vol. XXIII, 



termites (1900) he figures the gardens of Eutermes heterodon and describes 

 them as follows: "May 30, 1891, while digging in a hill-slope near the 

 factory N'dian just beside the water fall of the N'dian River a considerable 

 number of the fungus gardens of this species were unearthed. They were 

 as large as walnuts or somewhat smaller and of a light brownish yellow 

 color. They were scattered about in the earth, some a few inches below the 

 surface, others somewhat deeper. The earth between them was perforated 

 with a net-work of galleries, Avhich connected the different beds with one 

 another. Each of the latter was lying free in a cavity so that the termites 

 could move about over it without obstruction. Only here and there w^ere 

 they attached to the adjacent earthen wall. The nest or fungus garden 

 itself is rather fragile and made up of morel-like, folded, and rounded disks 

 separated by a labyrinth of long ventricose or more rarely rounded cavities. 

 The surface is lumpy and shows that the whole consists of spherical particles. 

 The cavities are filled with milkwhite larvte, workers, and soldiers, the two 

 latter with yellowish brown heads." Sjostedt's figures of the gardens of 

 E. heterodon are reproduced in Plate LIII, Fgs. 60 and 61. 



In 1904 Tragardh published an interesting account of three fungus- 

 growing termites from the Sudan {T. natalensis, vulgaris and trcegardhi). 

 The first builds large conical earthen mounds .8-2.1 m. in height and 1.4 

 -5.5 m. in diameter at the base. There are no openings on the surface of 

 these mounds, but within they have a number of large chambers, of which 

 only the peripheral ones contain fungus gardens. These are like sponges 

 and conform in shape to the earthen cavities on the floors of which they lie. 

 They are perforated with galleries and consist exclusively of finely com- 

 minuted vegetable substances that have been voided and wielded together 

 by the insects, for under the microscope they are seen to be made up of pellets 

 that have been flattened into lenticular forms. The fungus growth is de- 

 scribed as follows: "Under the microscope the surface of the substratum 

 is seen to be covered with a white felt-work of mycelium and under still 

 higher magniflcation small hyphae may be detected. These are aggregated 

 here and there to form small round plates as much as 1 mm. in diameter 

 and consisting of dense branched hyphfe. These apparently correspond 

 T:o the structures mentioned and described by Holtermann, but differ from 

 these, so far as I have been able to observe, in not having the tips of the 

 hyplipe swollen. Here and there on the inner walls, usually not in any 

 great abundance, but more sporadic, at least in the gardens I have examined, 

 there are small round bodies, which may be as much as 2.5 mm. in diameter. 

 They are of a brilliant white color and are unlike those mentioned by Holter- 

 mann in always lacking a peduncle. These spherules are of rather solid 

 consistency and have an external tougher envelope, the whole forming a 



