120 THE NATURALIST IN AUSTRALIA. 
clothing. In all of these forms, the same typical construction of rugged, overlapping 
clay-masses is distinctly apparent. 
The colour of these Kimberley termitaries is usually a light-red or Indian-red 
hue, corresponding with that of the red sand-stone that predominates in the district 
where they occur. Not unfrequently, however, as when constructed on the alluvial 
flats of the Fitzroy river, they agree with the immediate subsoil in being of a similar 
light brown tint. The opportunity was afforded the author, through the assist- 
ance of Dr. Ernest Black, then Government Resident at Derby, of making sections 
through termitaries of this White Ant, and also of acquiring information concerning 
the rate at which such half-demolished nests are reconstructed. Plate XVIII, fig. B, 
represents one such typical section made by the aid of pickaxe and: a cross-cut saw. 
The quest for the Queen Ant was unfortunately futile, and neither did the exposed 
chambers present anything approaching that diversity and symmetry of design 
originally credited by Smeathman to the West African Termes bellicosus. The larger 
but very irregular lacune, situated chiefly towards the centre of the termitary, do not 
appear to have been specially constructed, but to represent the interspaces that 
originally existed between the superimposed clay-layers. From the centre to the 
topmost and outer crust, the space is chiefly occupied with the closely crowded 
magazine chambers. There was, however, a smaller central nucleus, consisting of more 
diminutive cells, apparently the nurseries, but these were unoccupied when exposed to 
view. The magazine or provision chambers were, on the other hand, for the most 
part fully stocked with characteristic food material. This consisted exclusively of 
finely cut up leaves and stems of the grasses growing thickly in the vicinity of 
the nests. The presence of this material is plainly shown in many of the upper 
chambers of the section photographed, but still more conspicuously where it has 
fallen from the chambers, and lies scattered among the débris at the base of the 
hillock. 
The period of time occupied in rebuilding the partially destroyed hillocks of 
this Kimberley Termite was accurately gauged by sections made through examples 
in the neighbourhood of Derby. On the writer’s first visit in September, 1893, there 
happened to be a very characteristic example of one of these White Ant hillocks 
that had been accurately bisected a little over one year previously, when erecting 
the fence line of a new road to the Derby race-course. A photograph of this 
termitary with its reconstructed portions consisting of four over-lapping clay masses 
at its base, is reproduced in Plate XIX., fig. C. As will be recognised, the newly 
