126 THE NATURALIST IN AUSTRALIA. 
porary oven again, a small ant-hill, scientifically excavated, may, in the hands 
of an experienced bushman, be made to accomplish undreamt-of culinary triumphs. 
The author on one occasion witnessed a rather interesting episode that was 
enacted in connection with a small mound-shaped termitarium in the southern district 
of Western Australia. As a rule the Termites utilise the night hours only for the 
enlargement of their borders, their architectural work of the preceding night being 
clearly visible in the early morning in the form of a darker semi-dried clay patch on 
one or more areas of the termitary surface. To effect any such extension of their 
premises, they have to temporarily break passages through the original outer shell, 
a proceeding which, if done in broad daylight, would doubtless leave them open to 
the attacks of many enemies. An exceptional case to this general rule observed by the 
writer was on an afternoon immediately preceding a heavy rainfall, which proved 
to be the forerunner of continuous wet weather. The Termites apparently possessed 
an instinctive foreknowledge of the approaching meteorological change, and were deter- 
mined to make the most of the little dry weather left. Small breaches were 
consequently being made at innumerable points of the termitary, and the heads of 
the working individuals were every now and then visible as they arrived with their 
loads of tempered clay. 
There were other interested watchers of their operations. These were a 
colony of large red and black ants, from a neighbouring subterranean nest. A number 
of these insects were continually patrolling the surface of the White Ants’ hillock, 
and every now and then one of them would make a plunge at a scarcely visible 
opening. Its head and powerful jaws disappeared for a second or two within the 
clayey matrix, and would then be withdrawn, on most occasions dragging forth in 
its tenacious grip an unfortunate termite, which was speedily dispatched and borne 
away by the red ant with as much ease as a terrier could carry off a rat. The 
true ants, Formicide, are as a rule very high appreciators of the succulent 
Termites, or White Ants, as an article of food, and where a colony of the destruc- 
tive species is found making its depredations, there is scarcely a surer method of 
getting rid of these pests than by exposing their galleries and chambers to the 
inroads of the larger varieties of ordinary ants, which are almost always to be found 
in the vicinity. It not uncommonly happens, indeed, that termitaria are tenanted 
partly by termites and partly by ordinary ants. In such instances it may be 
assumed that the predatory ants have, in the first place, invaded and established 
a foothold in the White Ants’ habitation, from which the latter, while securely 
