77 



account of the attack upon trees which is almost identical with 

 Haviland's account, stating, as he did, that the nest is foi-med of 

 wood fibre inside the attacked ti'ee. 



That Termes gestroi was increasing in importance as a pest 

 is evident from Ridley's comments upon the failure of treatment, 

 consisting of scraping down the mud casings and treating the 

 injured surfaces with tar or substances injurious to the insects. 

 Ridley also observed that he had received from Selangor " specimens 

 found destroying Pararubber trees." 



It should be noted that both Haviland and Ridley say nothing 

 of the whereabouts of the source of the attack — that is, the parent 

 nest. The subsidiary nests described are obviously one of the 

 sequelae of the attack. 



It is a great pity that the nesting habits of Termes gestroi 

 were not then determined as valuable years were lost before more 

 definite knowledge was published and applied. Had planters then 

 known where the parent nests were to be found, and how 

 successfully the pest could be treated through these, Termes gestroi 

 might never have been given the opportunity to multiply and 

 establish itself as a pest of such enormous importance. 



Nowhere is the copy book maxim " prevention is better than 

 cui'e " more truly applicable than in the province of economic 

 entomology and to no insect more aptly than to Termes gestroi. 

 But for either it is essential to have an accui*ate and full knowledge 

 of the habits and life history of the insect ; efBorts at both 

 prevention and cure were shortly made, but without the essential 

 knowledge they were foredoomed to failure. 



The unfortunate lack of infonnation about Termes gestroi in the 

 early days is in my opinion one of the gravest misfortunes suffered 

 by the Malayan Para Rubber Industiy ; not alone, or mainly, 

 because thousands of dollars were wasted, and trees lost, but because 

 fuller knowledge would have induced the employment of sound 

 measures of timber treatment, and clean clearing, with all its 

 accruing advantages might have become as much a sine qua non of 

 rubber cultivation as clean weeding. 



The next two publications threw little further light on the 

 subject. In October, 1901, W, W. Bailey contributed a report in 

 which he describes "' Termites " as the worst enemy of his rubber, 

 eating out the heart of his healthiest and best rubber trees. Having 

 tried arsenic, sulphate of copper, phenyl, tuba, kerosene oil, etc., 

 without success, he decided to set coolies on to digging out queens 

 and breaking up the mounds, although he says he had been told by 

 more than one scientist that the queen of the rubber termite was not 

 to be found in mounds. The queens were taken from mounds one to 

 two feet high and each man averaged ten a day. "It may be said," 

 he wrote • " That they are not termites, and it may be true ; but one 



