THE NATURALIST IN AUSTRALIA. 



clothing. In all of these forms, the same typical construction of rugged, overlapping 

 clay-masses is distinctly apparent. 



The colour of these Kimberley termitaries is usually a light-red or Indian-red 

 hue, corresponding with that of the red sand-stone that predominates in the district 

 where they occur. Not unfrequently, however, as when constructed on the alluvial 

 Hats of the Fitzroy river, they agree with the immediate subsoil in being of a similar 

 light brown tint. The opportunity was afforded the author, through the assist- 

 ance of Dr. Ernest Black, then Government Eesident at Derby, of making sections 

 through termitaries of this White Ant, and also of acquiring information concerning 

 the rate at which such half-demolished nests are reconstructed. Plate XVIII., fig. B, 

 represents one such typical section made by the aid of pickaxe and a cross-cut saw. 

 The quest for the Queen Ant was unfortunately futile, and neither did the exposed 

 chambers present anything approaching that diversity and symmetry of design 

 originally credited by Smeathman to the West African Termes bellicosus. The larger 

 but very irregular lacunae, situated chiefly towards the centre of the termitary, do not 

 appear to have been specially constructed, but to represent the interspaces that 

 originally existed between the superimposed clay-layers. From the centre to the 

 topmost and outer crust, the space is chiefly occupied with the closely crowded 

 magazine chambers. There was, however, a smaller central nucleus, consisting of more 

 diminutive cells, apparently the nurseries, but these were unoccupied when exposed to 

 view. The magazine or provision chambers were, on the other hand, for the most 

 part fully stocked with characteristic food material. This consisted exclusively of 

 finely cut up leaves and stems of the grasses growing thickly in the vicinity of 

 the nests. The presence of this material is plainly shown in many of the upper 

 chambers of the section photographed, but still more conspicuously where it has 

 fallen from the chambers, and lies scattered among the debris at the base of the 

 hillock. 



The period of time occupied in rebuilding the partially destroyed hillocks of 

 this Kimberley Termite was accurately gauged by sections made through examples 

 in the neighbourhood of Derby. On the writer's first visit in September, 1893, there 

 happened to be a very characteristic example of one of these White Ant hillocks 

 that had been accurately bisected a little over one year previously, when erecting 

 the fence line of a new road to the Derby race-course. A photograph of this 

 termitary with its reconstructed portions consisting of four over-lapping clay masses 

 at its base, is reproduced in Plate XIX., fig. C. As will be recognised, the newly 



