106 THE NATURALIST IN AUSTRALIA. 



native taste. A chemical analysis of different descriptions of termitaria with the 

 object of ascertaining the correctness or otherwise of this anticipation might yield 

 interesting results. 



When, from among the emerging annual swarms, a matured pair of White 

 Ants have run the gauntlet of their many foes and meet together, it usually happens 

 that after a short preliminary toying in the air they alight upon the ground 

 again, but before the marriage tie is consummated are discovered by the outlying 

 workers of some other community, who, adopting them for their future king and 

 queen, thereupon enclose them in a clay chamber around which a new nest is built. 

 In this nest they are thenceforth immured, assiduously fed, and attended upon for 

 life. It has been ably argued by Fritz Miiller, that, notwithstanding the apparent 

 waste of life associated with the periodical swarming of the Termites, it is only 

 through such means, as is cogently advocated in accord with the tenets of the 

 Darwinian theory, that the very desirable cross-fertilisation of these insect races 

 can be effectually carried out. 



White Ants possess, and correctly so far as a considerable number of species 

 extend, a most unenviable notoriety for their terribly destructive, and more especially 

 xylophagous, or wood-eating, propensities. Although the softer woods, such as 

 European deal, are, where such choice exists, preferentially selected by them, scarcely 

 any description of wood, not excepting even the world-famed Western Australian 

 Jarrah, would appear to be absolutely proof against their depredations. According 

 to the observations of Mr. E. C. Hare, sometime Government Resident at Wyndham, 

 in Cambridge Gulf, in which township White Ants are conspicuously destructive, 

 a considerable amount of difference is exhibited by jarrah wood grown in different 

 neighbourhoods with regard to its being proof or otherwise against White Ant ravages. 

 Only such wood as has been derived from the ironstone ranges, or from a mineral 

 district is, it would appear, absolutely ant-proof. Blocks of the same wood grown 

 in other localities and exposed by way of test beside it are speedily attacked. 

 The author "has been informed, on the other hand, by the above-named gentleman 

 that the wood of the Cypress pine, indigenous to tropical Australia, resists the 

 attacks of the White Ants for a considerable time, and is on this account chosen in 

 the northern districts for the construction of survey posts and pegs. The fact that 

 Termites can corrode metal and even glass by means of some special secretion has 

 been attested to by Hagen, who correlates the property with glandular structures, 

 situated near the insect's rectum. At Jamestown, in St. Helena, and also in the 



