108 THE NATURALIST IN AUSTRALIA. 
may crush through the flooring boards, the door posts and lintels may be found 
hollowed to a shell, and even the legs of the chairs and tables, while apparently 
sound to the external view, may be so tunnelled interiorly as to crumble into dust 
with the slightest pressure. 
Australia is commonly alluded to as a land of “contrarieties.” In the matter 
of Ants the scriptural proverb will allow of material modification. The sluggard is 
therein counselled:to “go to the Ant.” In Australia a slavish obedience of the 
prophet’s injunction would be altogether a work of supererogation. The Ant, in that 
happy land, comes to, or goes for, the sluggard! 
It is commonly supposed that it is the fabricators and inhabitants of the 
hugh hillocks or termitaria, which are so conspicuous a feature in many tropical 
districts, that are the authors of the ravages that have been so abundantly attested 
to. So far, however, as the writer’s experiences have extended, this by no means 
applies to the Australian species. These, as presently shown, differ very materially 
with relation to the dimensions and contours of the termitaria they construct, 
but in no instance among the many forms observed and here placed on record 
were they found to contain that specially destructive variety of Termite whose 
depredations are so conspicuous throughout the northern territories of Australia. This 
species, which appears to be closely allied to the Indian Termes taprobanes, is repre- 
sented by the photograph of a living colony of some hundred individuals, previously 
referred to, and reproduced on Page 103. This type of White Ant is never found 
inhabitating any of the several descriptions of termitaries characteristic of the same 
districts, even though it may infest dead or decaying timber almost in contact with 
them. These notoriously destructive and essentially wood-eating Termites are, in point 
of fact, subterranean in their habits, living and breeding in underground galleries, 
whence they construct mines and tunnels to the immediate scene of their depredations. 
On the other hand, the huge mound constructors are in Australia, so far as observed 
by the author, exclusively graminivorous, collecting and hoarding up in their innumerable 
provision chambers vast stores of finely-cut up grass fibre. 
It is a somewhat singular circumstance that the marked diversity of size, 
form, and correlated peculiarities that distinguish the habitations of the different 
species of White Ants throughout the tropical areas of the world’s surface, have 
hitherto received such scant scientific attention. It will further surprise many readers, 
probably, to learn that up to the present date a paper contributed over a century 
ago (1781), by Henry Smeathman, to the Transactions of the English Royal Society, 
