106 THE NATURALIST IN AUSTRALIA. 
native taste. A chemical analysis of different descriptions of termitaria with the 
object of ascertaining the correctness or otherwise of this anticipation might yield 
interesting results. 
When, from among the emerging annual swarms, a matured pair of White 
_Ants have run the gauntlet of their many foes and meet together, it usually happens 
that after a short preliminary toying in the air they alight upon the ground 
again, but before the marriage tie is consummated are discovered by the outlying 
workers of some other community, who, adopting them for their future king and 
queen, thereupon enclose them in a clay chamber around which a new nest is built. 
In this nest they are thenceforth immured, assiduously fed, and attended upon for 
life. It has been ably argued by Fritz Miiller, that, notwithstanding the apparent 
waste of life associated with the periodical swarming of the Termites, it is only 
through such means, as is cogently advocated in accord with the tenets of the 
Darwinian theory, that the very desirable cross-fertilisation of these insect races 
can be effectually carried out. 
White Ants possess, and correctly so far as a considerable number of species 
extend, a most unenviable notoriety for their terribly destructive, and more especially 
xylophagous, or wood-eating, propensities. Although the softer woods, such as 
European deal, are, where such.choice exists, preferentially selected by them, scarcely 
any description of wood, not excepting even the world-famed Western Australian 
Jarrah, would appear to be absolutely proof against their depredations. According 
to the observations of Mr. R. C. Hare, sometime Government Resident at Wyndham, 
in Cambridge Gulf, in which township White Ants are conspicuously destructive, 
a considerable amount of difference is exhibited by jarrah wood grown in different 
neighbourhoods with regard to its being proof or otherwise against White Ant ravages. 
Only such wood as has been derived from the ironstone ranges, or from a mineral 
district is, it would appear, absolutely ant-proof. Blocks of the same wood grown 
in other localities and exposed by way of test beside it are speedily attacked. 
The author has been informed, on the other hand, by the above-named gentleman 
that the wood of the Cypress pine, indigenous to tropical Australia, resists the 
attacks of the White Ants for a considerable time, and is on this account chosen in 
the northern districts for the construction of survey posts and pegs. The fact that 
Termites can corrode metal and even glass by means of some special secretion has 
been attested to by Hagen, who correlates the property with glandular structures, 
situated near the insect’s rectum. At Jamestown, in St. Helena, and also in the 
