TERMITES (WHITE ANTS). 125 
of Rockhampton, Central Queensland, the beautiful Parrakeet, Posephotus pulcherrimus, 
burrows and builds its nest, while the handsome White-tailed Kingfisher, Zanysiptera 
sylvia, an ally of the more remarkable Racket-tailed species, 7. microrhyncha, burrows 
a hole and deposits its eggs in a small symmetrically ovate form of termitary 
that occurs in the thickly-wooded scrubs in the coastal ranges at Bloomfield, 
near Cooktown, North Queensland. For the information relating to these two 
species, as also for the characteristic photographs reproduced in the lower half of 
Plate XXII., portraying the termitaria with their associated nest burrows, the author 
is indebted to Mr. D. Le Souef, the Director of the Melbourne Zoological and 
Acclimatisation Society’s Gardens. 
On submitting outline sketches of these last-named types of termitaria to 
Mr. Walter Froggatt, the writer was informed by that authority that they most probably 
represent, in both instances, ground-constructed nests of EHutermes fumipennis, a species 
which builds indifferently on the ground or in branches of trees, after the manner of 
the Termes arboreum, originally described by Smeathman, referred to on a previous 
page. The arboreal nests of this or an allied species have been observed by the 
author throughout North Queensland and are of common occurrence in Thursday 
Island, Torres Straits. The termitaria constructed under these conditions are dark 
coloured, usually sub-spheroidal or ovate in shape, about eighteen inches in diameter, 
and most frequently constructed at a height of some ten or twelve feet only from the 
ground, with which they are connected by clay-covered galleries. The substance of 
these nests, as in the African arboreal forms, consists almost exclusively of finely 
comminuted woody particles, cemented by the excreted juices of the termites into a 
homogeneous mass of remarkable density. 
As is familiar to most Northern Australian settlers, snakes, lizards, rats, 
scorpions, and a variety of other animals take up their abode within the natural 
or artificially excavated fissures of the White Ants’ nests, some little caution, on 
account of the first-named reptiles, having to be exercised when dismantling a 
hillock. Among the utilitarian uses to which the termitaries have been largely 
applied in the Kimberley district is that of road-making, a circumstance which is 
accountable for the disappearance of numbers of the largest size that formerly 
occupied a position close to the township of Derby. Used as a top layer, it binds 
down and hardens with the weather into a cement-like mass of great hardness 
and durability. For a like purpose termitary earth, damped and rammed, is 
highly esteemed as the top covering of the flooring of settlers’ huts. As an extem- 
