JUNGLE LORE 223 



Don't lay out lunch or sit down to it in the close neigh- 

 bourhood of this ant. 



Don't run into his nest when out on an elephant in the 

 forests on shikar or any other purpose. 



Don't have a machan built in a tree infested with the 

 red ant nests. 



Don't, when waiting for a beat, admiring a view, or 

 merely taking a rest, lean against a tree-trunk without first 

 carefully scrutinizing it to see whether or no a column or 

 two of these vicious insects are ascending or descending 

 from a nest in its branches. 



Even this ant has its uses. In Kanara and some other 

 parts of India and throughout Burma and Siam a paste is 

 made of him which is eaten as a condiment with curry ! 



There are some groups of minute wood and bamboo 

 " shot-hole " borers in India, so-called because timber and 

 bamboos infested with them have the appearance of having 

 been fired into with a charge of anything from No. 4 to 

 No. 9 shot. These beetles belong chiefly to families known 

 as the Bostrychidce, Scolytidce and Platypodidce, In bunga- 

 lows with wooden roofs, if unprovided with ceiling cloths, 

 one is annoyed by the operations of these little borers, 

 owing to the fact that tables, chairs and floors become 

 covered with the sawdust particles ejected under their 

 operations. This is a common experience in many of the 

 forest rest-houses out in the jungles of India. 



The Bostrychidce are the chief culprits in the case of 

 bamboos. Bamboo roofing and bamboo furniture and 

 chairs and tent poles become so pitted by these insects, 

 who tunnel out the interior structure, that under the attacks 

 they one day suddenly collapse. The infestation can be 

 prevented or stopped by soaking the bamboo in crude 

 Rangoon oil. As a result of investigation work which I 

 carried out in the Indian Museum at Calcutta, the bamboo 

 telephone posts which went up with the Thibet Expedition 

 (1903-5) were so treated. They remained unattacked 

 throughout. They were as sound as ever when I inspected 

 them three years later, after they had been returned to store 

 in Calcutta. Had they not been so treated they would 

 have been infested by the beetles before they reached the 

 foot of the Himalaya on their way up, and have become 

 useless for the purpose required. Wooden poles would have 

 been too heavy to carry up ; for the precipitous slopes up to 



