NEUEOPTEEA. 413 



rapidity. They have been known, in one single night, to pierce the 

 whole of a table leg from top to bottom, and then the table itself ; 

 and then, still continuing to pierce their way, to descend through 

 the opposite leg, after having devoured the contents of a trunk 

 placed upon the table. On account of the devastations which 

 they occasion, Linnseus has called the white ant the greatest plague 

 of the Indies. 



There exist in France two species of termites, the Termes 

 lucefugus, a little insect of a brilliant black (at least in the male) ) 

 with russety legs, which is common enough in the moors of 

 Gascony; and the Yellow-necked White ant ( Termes jlavicolis) , 

 which lives in the interior of trees and does a great deal of mis- 

 chief in Spain and in the south of France to olive and other 

 precious trees, whilst the first attacks oak and fir trees. 

 Latreille established that it is the Termes lucifugus which 

 causes such havoc at La Rochelle, at Rochefort, at Saintes, at 

 Tournay Charente, in the Isle of Aix, &c., where many houses 

 have been completely undermined by these terrible insects. But 

 M. de Quatrefages * has proved that the habits of the termes found 

 in towns differ in many essential points from the habits of termes 

 in the country. And so it is most probable that the former 

 belong to an exotic species, which must have been unfortunately 

 imported into France by a merchant vessel. According to 

 M. Bobe-Moreau,f it was only in 1797 that termites were dis- 

 covered for the first time in Rochefort, in a house which had 

 stood for a long while uninhabited, and which they had com- 

 pletely undermined. In 1804, Latreille relates, as a "hear- 

 say," that the termites had for some years made the inhabitants 

 of Rochefort uneasy, but in 1829, the same author tells a very 

 different tale. He speaks with dismay of the ravages committed 

 by this insect in the workshops belonging to the Royal Navy. 

 The importation of the termes into France is then of recent date. 

 A note which was sent to M. de Quatrefages by M. Beltremieux, 

 fixes with still greater accuracy the date of the importation 

 of the termites ; it must have taken place about 1780, a period at 



* *' Note sur les Termites de la Rochelle." Annales des Sciences Naturettes, 3 e 

 serie, tome xx., p. 18. 1853. 



t " Memoire sur les Termites observes a Rochefort." Saintes, 1813. 



