TERMITES (WHITE ANTS). 125 



of Rockhampton, Central Queensland, the beautiful Parrakeet, Posephotus pulcherrimus, 

 burrows and builds its nest, while the handsome White-tailed Kingfisher, Tanysiptera 

 sylma, an ally of the more remarkable Racket-tailed species, T. micro r/iyncha, burrows 

 a hole and deposits its eggs in a small symmetrically ovate form of termitary 

 that occurs in the thickly-wooded scrubs in the coastal ranges at Bloomfield, 

 near Cooktown, North Queensland. For the information relating to these two 

 species, as also for the characteristic photographs reproduced in the lower half of 

 Plate XXII., portraying the termitaria with their associated nest burrows, the author 

 is indebted to Mr. D. Le Souef, the Director of the Melbourne Zoological and 

 Acclimatisation Society's Gardens. 



On submitting outline sketches of these last-named types of termitaria to 

 Mr. Walter Froggatt, the writer was informed by that authority that they most probably 

 represent, in both instances, ground-constructed nests of Eutermes fumipennis, a species 

 which builds indifferently on the ground or in branches of trees, after the manner of 

 the Termes arboreum, originally described by Smeathman, referred to on a previous 

 page. The arboreal nests of this or an allied species have been observed by the 

 author throughout North Queensland and are of common occurrence in Thursday 

 Island, Torres Straits. The termitaria constructed under these conditions are dark 

 coloured, usually sub-spheroidal or ovate in shape, about eighteen inches in diameter, 

 and most frequently constructed at a height of some ten or twelve feet only from the 

 ground, with which they are connected by clay-covered galleries. The substance of 

 these nests, as in the African arboreal forms, consists almost exclusively of finely 

 comminuted woody particles, cemented by the excreted juices of the termites into a 

 homogeneous mass of remarkable density. 



As is familiar to most Northern Australian settlers, snakes, lizards, rats, 

 scorpions, and a variety of other animals take up their abode within the natural 

 or artificially excavated fissures of the White Ants' nests, some little caution, on 

 account of the first-named reptiles, having to be exercised when dismantling a 

 hillock. Among the utilitarian uses to which the termitaries have been largely 

 applied in the Kimberley district is that of road-making, a circumstance which is 

 accountable for the disappearance of numbers of the largest size that formerly 

 occupied a position close to the township of Derby. Used as a top layer, it binds 

 down and hardens with the weather into a cement-like mass of great hardness 

 and durability. For a like purpose termitary earth, damped and rammed, is 

 highly esteemed as the top covering of the flooring of settlers' huts. As an extern- 



