TERMITES (WHITE ANTS). 121 
added portions cover somewhat less than one-fourth of the entire bisected surface. 
In March, 1895, the passage to England, via Singapore, gave the author an hour or 
two on shore at Derby, which opportunity was hastily utilised for securing a second 
photograph of this particular termitarium, which by this time had had another 
eighteen months for the work of reconstruction. The replica of this second photo- 
graph, Plate XIX., fig. D, shows that a very considerable advance had been 
accomplished. The newly added patches extend now to over two-thirds of the area 
originally laid bare, and it may be reasonably anticipated that another twelvemonths’ 
uninterrupted work at the same ratio, will effect the covering in and complete 
obliteration of the original sectional scar. It is worthy of note that an examination 
made and a photograph taken on the same occasion of the more recently bisected 
termitary, Plate XVIII., fig. B, revealed the fact that it had accomplished an almost 
identical amount of progress in the direction of reconstruction as that exhibited after 
a similar interval by the one here made the subject of special notice. On the other 
hand, a second photograph taken at the same time of the undisturbed termitary 
having a dog’s-head-like apex, Plate XVII., exhibited, after this intervening interval 
of eighteen months, scarcely any perceptible alteration of contour or increase in bulk. 
Examining the two photographs carefully with a hand-glass, it is difficult in point 
of fact to detect so much as even the difference of a wrinkle between them. This 
somewhat surprising fact can be explained by the supposition that this particular 
termitarium had attained to the full zenith of its development, that the queen 
probably was deceased, and that any future changes would be those of erosion and 
decay. That this process is already in progress is in fact distinctly visible, the 
external clay layer being worn and weathered in places as in the larger example 
portrayed in Plate XVIII. 
The third type of termitarium constructed by the Australian White Ants 
inviting attention in this Chapter, is that illustrated by Plates XV. and XX. 
This specific form is not built to a remarkable height, eight feet representing the 
tallest observed. Its specially conspicuous features are the peculiarly elongate 
compressed contours of every individual hillock, supplemented by the circumstance 
that in every instance the long axis of the structure is in a precise line with the 
north and south poles of the magnetic compass. On this account the very appropriate 
titles of Magnetic, Meridian, or Compass Ant-hills have been conferred upon these 
special forms. The photographs here reproduced were taken by the writer in the 
valley of the Laura river some 60 miles inland from Cooktown, North Queensland. 
Q 
