THE NATURALIST IN AUSTRALIA. 



telegraph station in York Peninsula that were at least fourteen feet high, and 

 which towered above his head while passing them on horseback. Unfortunately, this 

 happened in the author's pre-photographic days, or a pictorial record of these giants 

 of their tribe would have been secured. The colour of these Cape York termitaries 

 is usually a rich ferruginous red, corresponding in this respect with the character of 

 the underlying soil. 



A species of White Ant, apparently identical with this Cape York form, erects 

 pyramidal termitaria throughout the Northern Territory of the Australian Continent. 

 On the occasion of the writer's first visit to the neighbourhood of Wyndham, Cambridge 

 Gulf, Western Australia, as the guest of Captain the Hon. H. P. Foley Vereker and 

 the officers of H.M.S. "Myrmidon," during their survey of this coastal area, in the 

 year 1888, he availed himself of the opportunity of examining many of these nests, 

 and with the co-operation of Mr. R. C. Hare, then resident magistrate of Wyndham, 

 made sections and excavations in selected hills, with the hope of discovering the royal 

 chamber with its enclosed queen. None of these efforts, however, proved successful. 

 Not being at the time cognisant of its approximate position, or of the rapidity, as 

 attested to by Smeathman, with which the labourer termites wall up all the entrances 

 to this chamber, it seems highly probable that as soon as the disturbing strokes of 

 the pickaxes and shovels approached this royal cell, it was converted by their masonic 

 dexterity into what was apparently a homogeneous lump of the component clay, and 

 thus evaded notice. It is commonly stated in this district of North Australia that the 

 subterranean excavations of the White Ants penetrate as deeply into the earth as the 

 hillock is raised in altitude above it. This certainly appears to be the case with 

 relation to many of the termitaria examined, which revealed beneath the surface 

 of the ground as extensive and complex a mass of cells as was found in the previously 

 demolished overlying hillock. The food material contained in the magazine cells of 

 these termitaries consisted, so far as was observed, of finely chopped grass, such as is 

 found in the habitations of the species next described. Concerning this food storage 

 it is worthy of record that, in many instances, it was possible to trace the continuity 

 of the clay-covered galleries for several hundred feet along the surface of the ground 

 in the grassy plains near Wyndham. It would appear that the termites issue out 

 of these galleries to mow down and garner in their harvest of cut-up grasses by 

 innumerable temporarily opened breaches during the night hours only. 



The second type of termitarium, with reference to the circumstance that it has 

 been met with by the author only in the Kimberley district of Western Australia, 



