INDIAN WOOD-DESTROYING WHITE ANTS. 693 



me to find Tlutermes among the noxious White Ants ; for all the 

 species of it I had so far been able to observe were quite harmless 

 creatures feeding on bits of dry grass only. Yet there could be no 

 doubt about the destructive tendencies of this South Oanara species : 

 every piece of wood — trunks of fallen trees, withered and broken off 

 branches, twigs, and the like — lying about on the ground in the 

 neighbourhood of a nest, were attacked, not by a few, but by hun- 

 dreds or even thousands of individuals. They were certainly the 

 most active and voracious wood-destroyers I had ever met. Their 

 nest is a " carton nest ", a large football-like structure hanging high 

 up in a tree and crammed full of an astonishing number of Termites. 

 The live tree however on which the nest is situated they never 

 touch ; they build covered tunnels down the trunk to the ground, 

 where they devour whatever wood they can find. 



A new and apparently very rare species of Odontotermes was 

 taken, feeding on wood, at Khandala and Calcutta. The likeness 

 of the soldiers of this kind to those of Coptotermes is remarkable : 

 they have nearly the same brown-red head, the same porcelain-white 

 abdomen, the same milky-white secretion when irritated ( for des- 

 cription of Ooptotermes, see preceding paper, p. 377). But the 

 tooth on their left mandible leaves no doubt that they belong to the 

 genus Odontotermes. Moreover their two-sized workers, with black- 

 ish abdomen, are recognised at a glance as members of this tribe. 



New species of Microcerotermes were observed at Mangalore and 

 Navoor, a village at the foot of the Ghats about 50 miles east of the 

 former place. More interesting, from a purely scientific point of 

 view, was the discovery of a colony of Gryptotermes at Bangalore, 

 probably the first representative of this genus recorded from the 

 Indian Continent. The nest had been constructed in a dried up 

 stump of a branch of a live Ficus tree. 



The question has often been put to me : What about the occur- 

 rence of wood-destroying Termites in mountainous districts ? Mj 

 observations in the Ghats of South Canara and Mysore have con- 

 vinced me that, in the said region at least, none are found higher 

 up than 3-4,000 feet above the level of the sea. I have, indeed, 

 taken White Ants on the very top of the Kudre Mukh mountain, 

 i.e., more than 6,000 feet high j but they were of the harmless Gapri- 

 termes kind. The task of removing dry wood and thus making- 

 room for fresh growth which is so effectively carried on by wood- 

 eating White Ants in the lower parts of the Ghats, has, in the ex- 

 tensive forests covering the heights above 4,000 feet, apparently 

 devolved on larvse of various kinds of Coleoptera ( Buprestidce, 

 Longieornia, etc.). Nearly all the pieces of dry wood I examined 

 up there showed signs of attacks of beetle larvse ; these signs are so 

 characteristic that they cannot be mistaken for Termite feeding 

 figures. 



