TERMITES (WHITE ANTS). 1Q9 



with relation to certain nest or mound-building African species, constitutes the 

 standard account, and that his illustrations are reproduced, with trivial variations, 

 in most modern zoological textbooks and other popular narratives of White Ants and 

 their fabrications. 



This remarkable hiatus in our knowledge of a very important insect group is 

 fortunately on the eve of being filled in by the labours of several independent workers. 

 Dr. J. D. Haviland, more especially, has in preparation the account of his recent 

 extensive investigations of the Termitidse of Singapore and South Africa, from which 

 widely-separated regions he obtained no less than eighty-one distinct specific 

 types, a magnificent addition to the small list of less than one hundred previously 

 recorded species. Dr. Haviland was further fortunate in bringing certain of these 

 forms alive to England, and produced a notable sensation by exhibiting them in 

 conjunction with his preserved examples at one of the past year's scientific meetings 

 of the Linnsean Society of London. A reference to Dr. Haviland's original observations 

 concerning certain of the species whose habits he investigated is included in a 

 future page. 



The Termite fauna of Australia will probably prove on examination to be 

 especially rich in the number and variety of its specific types. Little is attempted 

 in this Chapter beyond the portraiture and a descriptive outline of the leading modifi- 

 cations of the nest-mounds or termitaria of the species peculiar to the eastern, western 

 and northern districts of the tropical regions of this Island-Continent. The systematic 

 identification and classification of the Australian Termitidse has been already commenced 

 by Mr. W. W. Froggatt, of the Sydney Technological Museum, and as soon as his 

 investigations are more advanced, it will be an easy matter to correlate the typical 

 mound-forms figured in this volume with the technical nomenclature of the special 

 White Ant types that build them. So far, as a preliminary instalment towards a 

 comprehensive Monograph on this subject, Mr. Froggatt has contributed to the 

 " Proceedings of the Linnsean Society of New South Wales " for the year 1895 a paper 

 which constitutes a general survey of the distribution of the hitherto known species 

 and a special reference to a mound-constructing type distinctive of New South Wales. 

 No technical name, however, is associated with either this or any other Australian 

 specific forms that are less extensively referred to. The communication by the author 

 to Mr. Froggatt of notes and sketches relating to the termitaria here figured has 

 served only to elicit the fact that their constructors are apparently in all instances 

 specifically new and undescribed, and await the appearance of Mr. Froggatt's projected 



