9 8 



ECONOMIC ZOOLOGY 



viduals, Fig. 75, the workers, soldiers, kings and queens; of these the 

 workers are the most numerous and are the ones that do the damage. 

 In some tropical forms the queen is many times as large as the other 

 forms. In warm places eggs may be laid at any time during the year. 

 At times, usually spring or fall, certain winged sexual individuals leave 

 the nest in large numbers and swarm in new places to start new colonies. 

 These " flying" ants are often destroyed in enormous numbers by birds. 

 Termites are natural wood destroyers and live in colonies of usually 

 several thousand individuals in decaying logs, dead trees, foundation 



PIG. 77. Book from a library at Van Buren, Ark., ruined by white ants. (From 

 Snyder, White Ants as Pests in the United States and Methods of Preventing their 

 Damage.) 



timbers of houses, fences and other wood in contact with the ground, 

 and in complicated underground passages usually found beneath wood 

 or other debris. They sometimes work from these colonies up into 

 the lower floors of houses where they riddle the floors and joists with 

 their passages until nothing but a shell is left and their presence is first 

 made known by the sudden collapse of some timber. It is in this destruc- 

 tion of woodwork that the white ants do their greatest damage, es- 

 pecially to timber that is in contact with moist ground, and particularly 

 in tropical and sub-tropical regions, the ravages have been reported as 



