TERMITES (WHITE ANT8). 



added portions cover somewhat less than one- fourth of the entire bisected surface. 

 In March, 1895, the passage to England, via Singapore, gave the author an hour or 

 two on shore at Derby, which opportunity was hastily utilised for securing a second 

 photograph of this particular termitarium, which by this time had had another 

 eighteen months for the work of reconstruction. The replica of this second photo- 

 graph, Plate XIX., fig. D, shows that a very considerable advance had been 

 accomplished. The newly added patches extend now to over two-thirds of the area 

 originally laid bare, and it may be reasonably anticipated that another twelvemonths' 

 uninterrupted work at the same ratio, will effect the covering in and complete 

 obliteration of the original sectional scar. It is worthy of note that an examination 

 made and a photograph taken on the same occasion of the more recently bisected 

 termitary, Plate XVIII., fig. B, revealed the fact that it had accomplished an almost 

 identical amount of progress in the direction of reconstruction as that exhibited after 

 a similar interval by the one here made the subject of special notice. On the other 

 hand, a second photograph taken at the same time of the undisturbed termitary 

 having a dog's-head-like apex, Plate XVII., exhibited, after this intervening interval 

 of eighteen months, scarcely any perceptible alteration of contour or increase in bulk. 

 Examining the two photographs carefully with a hand-glass, it is difficult in point 

 of fact to detect so much as even the difference of a wrinkle between them. This 

 somewhat surprising fact can be explained by the supposition that this particular 

 termitarium had attained to the full zenith of its development, that the queen 

 probably was deceased, and that any future changes would be those of erosion and 

 decay. That this process is already in progress is in fact distinctly visible, the 

 external clay layer being worn and weathered in places as in the larger example 

 portrayed in Plate XVIIT. 



The third type of termitarium constructed by the Australian White Ants 

 inviting attention in this Chapter, is that illustrated by Plates XV. and XX. 

 This specific form is not built to a remarkable height, eight feet representing the 

 tallest observed. Its specially conspicuous features are the peculiarly elongate 

 compressed contours of every individual hillock, supplemented by the circumstance 

 that in every instance the long axis of the structure is in a precise line with the 

 north and south poles of the magnetic compass. On this account the very appropriate 

 titles of Magnetic, Meridian, or Compass Ant-hills have been conferred upon these 

 special forms. The photographs here reproduced were taken by the writer in the 



valley of the Laura river some 60 miles inland from Cooktown, North Queensland. 

 Q 



