154 -^ Novel Depredator of the Grape - Vine. 



A NOVEL DEPREDATOR OF THE GRAPE-VINE. 



The wonderful ingenuity with which the white ants of tropical countries 

 constnict for themselves habitations of great size and strength was first 

 made known in detail by Smeathman, who in 1781, in the Philosophical 

 Transactions of the Royal Society of London, gave full and accurate ac- 

 counts of several species. His statements and illustrations, with some 

 minor additions, whether of observation or fancy, have found their way 

 into all the encyclopeedias and text-books since published. Accounts have 

 also been given of other species of the genus Termes. In the fourth volume 

 of the Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, Dr. 

 T. S. Savage, a missionary of West Africa, gave some interesting observa- 

 tions on the dissection of nests of Termites, both confirming and criticising 

 Smeathman's account. 



It is not generally known that white ants are found in this country. We 

 have, however, one species which has spread quite widely, and has become, 

 at times, very destructive. There is, indeed, no fear that the devastations 

 of these insects will equal those of their congeners of Africa and India ; 

 that our houses will be undermined, and our furniture crumble to dust at a 

 touch : for it is under ground, and in damp, moist localities, that they are 

 generally found ; although, in some instances, they have bee-n discovered at 

 work on perfectly dry material. A friend of mine noticed a colony, one 

 spring, in an old stump : the stump had been standing for years, too dry 

 to rot away, its roots scarcely buried in the gravelly soil of the hill-side. 



According to Dr. Asa Fitch, in his third and fourth reports on the inju- 

 rious insects of New York, these ants are found in myriads in that State, 

 where they wholly consume the interior of posts and stakes, leaving the 

 outer surface entire ; and, at times, destroy a fence in the course of four 

 years. Their favorite abode seems to be in posts from which the bark has 

 not been removed. There, hidden from view, they consume the soft sap- 

 wood immediately under the bark, and afterwards extend their burrows into 

 the more solid heart-wood. Decaying stumps, wood lying on the ground, 

 and especially logs of the white pine, are everywhere occupied ; and where 

 pieces of the " second-growth," so much softer than those of the original or 



